Your really can’t teach money management in a classroom. Sure, you can teach people how to balance a check book, how to fill out a credit application, or even how to calculate interest. But money management really has to be learned in life. How to forgo one item in exchange for another, or how to appreciate the item that you saved for.
In the summer my parents gave me 25cents a week for the popsicle man who came by every weekday. I could get a popsicle a day for a nickel, or a dreamsicle for 10 cents but then I had to go a day with nothing. No matter how much I cried or begged, when I ran out of money they wouldn’t give me more until next week. I was probably only in second grade when this went on.
By the time I was in high school, my parents were giving me money once a semester to buy clothes. The first semester I bought a bunch of flashy hippy cloths within the first week. By the end of the semester I was sick of them. With each semester I got better at picking out the things that I would value. One semester, I bought almost nothing until the end of the semester, and then I went and bought a purple suede fringe jacket. (Gosh I wish I still had that!) The point being that I learned to postpone my desires for things, and I learned to budget my money. You can construct all the classroom exercises you want, but I don’t think you can really teach that except in the real world.
As other posters noted, parents are the ones that make the difference in this way.
