Money Lessons for Kids: The U.S. Mint

My plan was dastardly, in a parental way: I wanted to teach my three children all about personal finance and economics by trekking them through the Philadelphia Mint.

"We don't want to go," my three children said, in an odd state of agreement. "Can we just swim in the hotel?"

Nice try. But get in the car.

My aim was not to impart a dry lesson in economic history, nor to wow the tykes with the count per day of coins that roll off the Mint's assembly lines (32 million).

I wanted to teach a lesson in the naturally surreal nature of economics, one of the three lessons that will raise a child to like and possibly excel in finance.

By complete accident, I managed to teach all three.

First, the plan for a tour of the Mint. In Lesson Number One for Children on why to be interested in finance and eventually successful: Realize that economics is not dry but, in fact, almost always surreal, which makes it exciting, notably attractive to the young and curious.

It's not a Super Mario Card, but we're talking economics here. Everything is proportional. Best of all, once you realize how surreal it is, you can start anticipating some of the strangeness, some of the breaks from routine that can make you rich.

(The Mint, by the way, was also the nation's first bank -- but with all the write-offs and bailouts these days, I didn't want to commemorate that for the young and impressionable.)

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