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It's natural to want your kids to have a secure future. But when it comes to teaching the next generation how to handle money, parents are failing. Still there is hope! Financial expert Mary Hunt shows parents how to raise kids who have a healthy relationship with money--even if the parents themselves have made financial mistakes along the way or are struggling financially right now.

Drawing from solid statistics and her own hard-won knowledge and experience, Hunt helps parents protect their children from the financial pitfalls of easy credit, an attitude of entitlement, and our culture's chummy relationship with debt. From preschool through the teen years, every stage of a child's development is covered, including how to talk to them about money, how to help them start saving money and giving it away, and how to manage money wisely.

Mary Hunt is founder and publisher of Debt-Proof Living® (formerly Cheapskate Monthly™), which has 35,000 print subscribers and an average of 800,000 website hits per month. Her books have sold more than a million copies, she was the financial columnist for Woman's Day magazine, and her daily newspaper column is syndicated through United Features. The author of 7 Money Rules for Life, Hunt speaks widely on personal finance and has appeared on shows such as Good Morning America, Oprah, and Dr. Phil. She and her husband live in California.

Real-World Guide to Debt-Proof Your Kids

Syndicated Personal Finance Columnist Shares Practical Advice, Personal Experience

Our children are being groomed to become world-class consumers, and they are well on their way to becoming future debtors. The next generation is being manipulated by the advertising and consumer-credit industries who tell them they are entitled to whatever they want, when they want, but with little thought on how to pay for it. Unless parents intervene, statistics indicate that the majority of kids will lead a life severely impacted by consumer debt.

It's easy for parents to get hung up on the mundane side of parenting -  cooking, cleaning, carpooling -  and forget to teach money management skills. At best, parents have 18 years to teach their kids how to manage money skillfully. Failing to do that sets kids up for a lifetime of miserable debt. But there is hope and help for parents.

Personal finance expert Mary Hunt prepares readers to debt-proof their kids in Raising Financially Confident Kids. Readers learn how to develop a unique debt-proofing plan designed specifically for their children that will tear down attitudes of entitlement, build financial intelligence and neutralize the glamour of easy spending. Debt-proofed kids are guided by a set of values having to do with money, credit and debt.

Hunt shares her own experiences raising two sons, who are now financially responsible adults, and gives hope to parents in every financial situation. Her family was $100,000 in debt before they saw their sons' entitlement issues and realized the importance of teaching their 8 and 7-year-old the basics of money management. There is good news for parents in financial crisis; they will learn alongside their kids and grow together as a family as they begin to educate themselves and change their outlook on money.

In Raising Financially Confident Kids Hunt takes on the nuts and bolts of debt-proofing your kids and gives practical advice for parents. Hunt systematically lays out her proven method, which is tailored for preschoolers through high school and designed to help parents:

• Transform their children into effective money managers.
• Educate their children and steer them away from consumer debt to protect their future.
• Gradually turn over the money required for their care and support to their children.
• Trust their children to be good stewards of a portion of the family's resources.
• Engrain money management skills in their children so the lessons will last a lifetime.

According to Hunt, "It takes relatively little effort to teach kids about money, and the payoff is enormous. If you are diligent to work this teaching into the normal course of family life, it will come as naturally as teaching kids good manners or how to do laundry. It will be as ordinary as teaching them how to mow the lawn or wash the car."

Mary Hunt's book Raising Financially Confident Kids provides a lot of pragmatic advice on how to instill fiscal responsibility in youngsters. Hunt shares scary research (p. 108) that shows that 87% of high school students say they do an excellent job of managing their money, yet only 4% understand what mutual funds are, only 4% accurately understand Social Security, only 5% can correctly explain compound interest, and only 7% comprehend how life insurance works. No wonder we are a nation with more than half the population dependent on welfare, assistance, food stamps, loans, and credit cards.

To counteract this financial knowledge void, Hunt offers functional directives. She thinks young people should write out a mission statement with specific life goals. They should learn to create and follow a budget. She even says that as children grow older, they should become less reliant on their parents by being handed a "responsibility list" in which they will begin to pay for their own entertainment, special clothes, jewelry, and other fringe benefits. They also should be responsible for doing work at home and, in time, hold down an outside job. America's children spend $30 billion per year on themselves and influence another $100 billion spent by their parents and grandparents. Yet, they grow up poor very often.

Although this book has charts, lists, formulas, plans, outlines, and lessons, it is all presented from a secular perspective. There are no Bible stories of the widow's mites or instructions regarding tithes and offerings nor details about the parable of the talents or anything strictly religious. There's a quick reference to Moses (p. 79) and a quote from a book by Charles Swindol, but precious little else of solid biblical teaching about financial responsibility. Thus, this is a functional book for teaching children about money, but it is not a text for explaining solid biblical principles about fiscal liabilities and management. - Dr. Dennis E. Hensley, www.ChristianBookPreviews.com

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