As a parent and entrepreneur I have been doing my best to teach my kids the value of generating their own money. I do not want them to go through the same financial experiences I did prior to getting into this home based business. I want them to understand some of the traditional ways of thinking (when it comes to making money), like having to go work for someone in a 9 to 5 they don't like is not needed just because its "stable" - and can be flat out wrong. You already have read the thoughts on working for other people from another team member of Business Know How.

I want my children to experience ways of generating income and also the rewards that come with it, without me feeling like I am giving them a silver spoon. Well I learned from a recent experience I had that all of my lessons must be sinking in.

I picked up my youngest daughter from preschool and pulled into the driveway. Underneath my beautiful pine tree in the front yard was a number of pine cones that had fallen. I told my four year old daughter that I would give her a quarter for each pine cone that she picked up. I honestly expected her to pick up 4 maybe 5 at most. Here is the lesson my daughter taught me - tonight after I had laid her down she got out of bed and told me to come look at her "surprise for me". She had a huge pile of dirty pine cones sitting in the corner of her room. She looked at me and said you owe me money. I went to get my wallet to hand her a couple of bucks, but she said, "you told me quarters".

After searching the whole house, and every wallet I paid my little entrepreneur 5 dollars for her "surprise to me". We sat, counted each pine cone and I had to make sure that I had a quarter to match each one. The only question this brings to mind is - what will she be like when she is a adult?

The point here is to instill an urgency in your children to become self-sufficiant, and teach them by example when it comes to making money. No, I am not saying that you need to put all your little kidoes to work for you, but if you can give them these little lessons from time to time they will see the importance of money. They are more apt to take care of things they buy with their own money, as oppose to you just buying everything for them.