10 Ways We Fail Our Kids Financially

Whether you like it or not, you will be a primary force in how your kids handle finances as adults.

In these increasingly difficult economic times, you probably wish your parents had spent more time teaching you about the personal-finance basics before having to learn them the hard way. If you aren't careful, you could be setting up your own kids for the same financial trouble. Here are some of the ways you may be financially failing your kids:

You assume your kids will learn personal finance at school: While it would be wonderful to be able to trust the school system to educate your kids in personal finance, that is not the case today. They didn't do it when you were a kid and things haven't changed since then. While there are 40 states that include personal finance to some extent in their educational guidelines, the reality is there are only seven states that require students to take a personal finance course in high school to graduate.

You assume your kids will learn personal finance on their own: It is true that if your kids don't learn personal finance from you, they are likely to learn it on their own. The problem is they aren't likely to learn until they have already made some huge personal-finance mistakes you could have helped prevent. If you don't feel you have the knowledge to teach them, get some books from the library and make it required reading for the entire family.

You let your kids have everything they want: While there is a parental desire to give kids all the things they want, this is one of the worst things you can do because they will assume that it should continue to be that way even when they become adults. It's important to understand that in order to keep your personal finances in order, you often have to make a choice and you can't have everything you want. This will require some time and patience to explain why they can't have certain things and that money is not an unlimited resource that can be found anywhere.