With so little education, it is not surprising so many get money matters all wrong when they become adults.

Larry Winget teaches tough lessons on Big Spenders, a TV program about young adults who have gone off the deep end of debt. Spending hundreds more a month than they earn and shopping impulsively, they regularly beg their parents and friends to bail them out.

One big spender had talked Mom and Dad into a new equity loan on their house to pay off her credit card only to charge the balance right back up and leave her parents with another mortgage to pay.

Our children receive few school lessons about money management, yet they deal with more money than we ever saw. Chicago’s Teenage Research Unlimited estimates that today’s teenagers spend $175 billion each year without much thought.

My first parenting lesson on this topic came when my 7-year-old asked for candy at our local convenience store. I knew my “yes” was wrong when she picked up the candy and started to walk out, leaving me to clean up the details. I stopped her and asked her to figure out how much her candy was. Then I gave her the money, asked her to pay for it and count the change. She might as well start learning how all of this happens.

I was prepared for this little lesson because I heard a mother at the food store ask her 12-year-old son, “Is the $3.39 cereal box size really a saving over the $2 size?” I could almost see smoke rising from his ears as he wrote numbers on the back of Mom’s shopping list to divide the quantities written on the packages by the prices. Great question.

Share financial information with your children as you can and teach the basics of a checking account and debit and credit cards – including the reports and bills they produce.

When one mom asked her son to sit down with her on bill-paying day he said, “Mom, I don’t want to know about that, it’ll just stress me out.” Yes, but it is a stress we all need to learn to endure.

Having the kids watch and do arithmetic while you pay monthly bills is a good dose of reality. After high school, they will be bombarded with pre-approved credit card offers. They need to know more about the bills and the possible debt problems that easy plastic spending can produce.

I asked my teenage grandson, now driving, about his embarrassing traffic ticket. “How much does it cost?” I asked.

“I don’t know, about $50, I think.”

That adds two parts to his driving problem, he doesn’t know and he doesn’t pay. Don’t ride with anyone who doesn’t pay for his mistakes and at least part of his car expenses and insurance.

How about matching any amount your teen deposits in a savings account? Give her or him a chance to see savings grow instead of taking up bad habits and bad debts with plastic cards.