<p>My son (a music major) took a personal finance course in college. He said it was the BEST course he took and he learned an enormous amount in it…and didn’t even mind the C he got in the course because the information was so valuable.</p>
<p>We gave him the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. It’s one of the “money talk” show books but it does have some practical ways to use your money and save.</p>
<p>I liked The Millionaire Next Door back in the 1990s.</p>
<p>I think that the best time to teach this stuff is in their early teenage years. We used books like Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets, articles from The Prudent Bear, Gold-Eagle.com, and various general financial books. We talked economics and finance at the dinner table and I let one of the kids trade $25K in one of my trading accounts.</p>
<p>Practically speaking I just added his name to our checking account and he has a debit card. There’s typically $8K to $12K in the account so he could have a big party if he wanted to. He’s never taken any money out of it though. He’s a bigger cheapskate than I am and I’d trust him to take over the family finances.</p>