The best ways to teach teenagers to appreciate the value of money?

Electric shock therapy. Cattle prods and electrodes.

What? Whaddya mean it’s not legal anymore? It was standard parental behaviour in the 70s!

If you want to teach a teenager not to speed when they learn to drive, take them to a trauma accident unit.

If you want to teach teenagers how not to mistreat money, take them to meet my cousin Virginia. She’s a walking financial horror story, the poster child for fiscal ineptitude.

She’ll ask for money. But she’s so desperate, $1 will get her talking. And it will be the best $1 you’ve ever spent on your kids.

Virginia is the daughter of my Uncle Mick, the laziest organism in the solar system. Or he was, until the pub roof fell on his head and killed him.

She had an awful role model. And in the best traditions of “learned behaviour”, Virginia soaked up every bad habit Mick had. Which was lots.

Given free rein by lazy parents, by age 15, she’d near-destroyed her credit record. By 25, she’d declared bankruptcy – the lazy “solution” to repaying the $40,000 she’d racked up in dumb debt.

Now she’s 30. She’s grown up (a little) and wants to buy a house. Except banks won’t lend to her. Probably ever.

Virginia’s main problems were genes and jeans. The former (Uncle Mick with undoubtedly a little input from our credit card-addict Grandma) caused extreme problems with the latter (uncontrolled clothes spending).

If you want your kids to learn good money habits, be a good role model. Kids, even teenagers, soak up pretty much everything you do, good or bad, by osmosis.

Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and principal adviser with Castellan Financial Consulting.