Reuters Money

If you think kindergarten is too soon to talk to your kids about money, think again. A survey released by McGraw-Hill found that nearly 30 percent of kindergarteners show an interest in the powerful green stuff, a figure that jumps to 80 percent by the time they reach third grade.

Given the U.S.’s epic financial foils in recent years, it’s no wonder parents are eager to give their children a leg up on money matters. But the problem is two-fold: For starters, not everyone can agree on who should be teaching their kids about cash. (Parents? Teachers? Both?) And of the one-third of educators currently teaching money management topics in school, a whooping 72 percent feel they don’t have sufficient resources.

“Our educational system really needs to focus on financial literacy,” says Louise Raymond, senior director of global corporate responsibility at McGraw-Hill. “Frankly, it’s critical that everyone be a part of this process. Parents need to be engaged, even if they made some wrong choices in the past.”

To that end, McGraw-Hill is hoping a new book will start the conversation. Last month the publisher underwrote the first 7,000 copies of The Nickels, Dimes and Dollars Book: A Wise Kid’s Guide to Money Matters in a bid to give teachers a tool for talking to their students about everything from the importance of savings to giving money to charity.

The book, written by Ellen Sabin, is a way of demystifying finances and presenting material in a way that gives kids the power to be the “boss of their own money.”

But some parents may be saying: not so fast. Nearly half (48 percent) of the parents surveyed said they alone should be responsible for teaching money management topics to children. By comparison, 68 percent of educators said that teaching kids financial literacy should be a joint effort between parents and teachers. So why the resistance among parents?

“This has the potential to be a charged conversation,” Sabin says. “A lot of values go into money decisions, and so you may have parents who believe in giving 10 percent of their money away, and then you’ll have parents who think they’re good at giving their children what they need and having a discussion about it is inappropriate.”

“Just like the sex talk might have a lot of nuance to it, this might too,” she adds.

More highlights from the survey:

* 82 percent of parents said it’s important for children at an elementary school age to be learning about spending, sharing, saving, earning and growing money

* 93 percent of parents said they are teaching their elementary school age child about money matters

*42 percent are either somewhat dissatisfied, very dissatisfied or not sure about the job their child’s elementary school is doing in introducing money matters to children.

* 72 percent of teachers feel they have insufficient materials to teach money topics at school.

They key, Sabin says, is to start early: “We often talk about teaching financial literacy to high school kids or college kids, but we recognize that by the time someone gets to this stage, their habits are already formed. When you focus on younger children, you give them the tools to not solve the problem, but to preempt the problem.”

Photo: Pre-schooler at an elementary school in Metairie, Louisiana October 3, 2005. REUTERS/Lee Celano