Children are information sponges, so how do we transfer positive values about money to them and help them avoid our bad habits?

Start them young. If their first full sentence isn’t “Dad, show me the money!”, then you’ve been a neglectful parent. You should probably be jailed. In Monopoly prison.

“Learned behaviour” is an incredibly powerful force. It explains how children pick up their parents’ behaviour by osmosis.

Shame on Andre Agassi for teaching his kids that fake mullets are okay (and for destroying a central tenet of the 80s for Generation X.)

Learned behaviour is a two-sided coin. While it allows you to blame your own shortcomings on mum and dad, it also means you’ll have to do something special to stop yourself buggering up your own kids’ lives.

The best way to give your kids a healthy attitude to money is to have one yourself. For some, that will be easy.

If you’re crap with cash, you’ve got a problem.

So, look at it this way. If you can clean up your own act, in front of your kids, you’ll not only improve your own finances, but you’ll teach your kids probably the greatest life skill of all – a natural ability to handle, and even make, money.

If you’re already pretty good with cash, then expand into some investing.

There’s one other significant problem. Australians are appallingly secretive when it comes to talking about money. That has to change. If you achieve something financially, talk about it in general terms with your kids.

Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and a licensed financial adviser.