Preschool, I guess. Maybe four?

I don't recall any time I did not understand money. That you worked for money and bought things with it. The concept of "bills" was a little vague until school age.

Pretty much the same as Elizabeth.

My parents taught me early the value and the importance of saving.

Don't remember for sure, but my little brother and I used to sell vegetables (mostly acorn squash) door to door at a young age. We spent the money on candy at that drug store. Collected empty pop bottles too. In those days you could find them in the ditches up and down the dirt roads or beg them off neighbors. $.02 for the regular size, $.05 for the big ones.

we got money on new years day... and could spend it on what ever. Aunts, uncles and grands gave you some, when you came around and wished "happy new year". We usually spend it on candy... which we never had any at home.

I've always known what money is.

I come from a banking family - uncles were bank presidents and my sister is a lawyer specializing in banking law, and so I cannot recall not knowing about money. I owned bank stock as a child, and my father was on the board of trustees for one bank.

Probably age 3-4. When we'd go to Arkansas in the summer to visit my mother's family, my grandfather would send a cab to pick me up and bring me up to his real estate office on the town square (2nd floor). I think the town had 2 cabs at that time (late 1940's)! Then he'd hand me a $5 bill and off we'd go to the Woolworths which was just off the square. It could take me 2 hours to figure out how to spend $5 in Woolworths at that time! We'd go back to his office, he'd call another cab, and "Eloise" would ride home in splendor, surrounded by many, many bags of "stuff" I had bought! He died just before I turned 6.

I was going to say at about six, I think, for there was a little store along the 3/8 or so mile walk to school and we could get suckers, jaw-breakers and penny candy ... but seldom had any money to get any.

Before that, when we visited the local grocer,, the display of candies was quite magnetic and we'd beg Dad to get us some candy ... and occasionally he'd succumb to our pleadings.

Dad used to give us a weekly allowance, but I don't remember when that began.

We'd get I think it was a dime under our pillow when a tooth fell out - and we knew what it could be used for!

I was 10 when World War II started, in 1939, and within about a year the farm hands on Dad's large (for the time) farm had gone to war, so for the next five years what Dad, this 11 - 12, etc. year old and a couple of younger brothers got done ... got done ... and the rest - didn't.

At the end of August Dad paid us for the work we'd done through the summer, and we were to buy our own school clothes and books.

We decided that it was unwise to spend it all (or even most of it) then. For our weekly allowance didn't cover all of our perceived needs, from time to time, and it was a good idea to have some residue of that summer clash available in times of need.

I guess that I could say that there was an atmosphere of frugality about our place, as well, for farmers needed reserves on hand when crops, etc. were bad ... it was, after all, just after the Dirty Thirties, that great depression.

ole joyful

About 3. I had one of those little tin globe banks that were common in the fifties. I remember my grandmother would hold out change and tell me to pick one. She me taught how the value of a nickel was less than a dime even though it was larger.

Back in the day even at that age I remember being given money to run up to the corner store for a pack of cigarettes (Phillip Morris) for mommy. Different times for sure.

I remember getting in trouble for throwing all those coins my parents gave me to play with....into the toy chest, with the rest of my toys. My mother picked all the coins out, acting all disgusted.....and said, "no more money until I understood what it was for". Maybe 4...?

Dad didn't like cigarettes - "two puffs and a spit!", he said.

He smoked a pipe, and an occasional cigar. We were never asked to buy them.

Hired hands were forbidden to smoke cigarettes in or near the barns.

I used to give him heck for smoking ... started myself at fifteen ... after about 6 mos.,

didn't like taste ... didn't like cost ... so quit!

o j

Oh I forgot about the tooth fairy, joyful. That may have been one of my earliest memories of receiving money too.

As far back as I can remember (age 3? age 4?), I understood coins and dollars were not toys. "Money" was part of the Grown Up's World, not for playing with in Kid's World.

In second grade, we were allowed to walk to the five and dime once a week and buy a dime's worth of candy. That's when money became worth paying attention to -- but still I really only knew/cared about the small change kids like me had, no clue about adult levels of money.

I was in upper elementary school when I started to get curious about how much money we as a family had, realizing it was a lot more than nickels, dimes and quarters. My parents explained, 'about as much as everyone else in the middle class had' and that contented me for a long time about money matters.

My grand daughter when she was around 2 and 3 would see ask me for my card whenever she saw an ATM anywhere so she could pay for something or get money. She assumed cards were magical money producers. LOL We would also let her sign the copy of the credit card slips whenever we used a CC. She also loved handing the cash tips to waitstaff personally when eating out.

All those little games paid off I guess. She's six now and is very good at math already and has a pretty good understanding of money in smaller denominations, making change etc.

My grand daughter is 3 1/2, next time she visits and we go to the store I will let her pay for a little something at the checkout with some coins.

This is a great question and one that I have not thought about at all. I remember being taught how to "count coins" using play money in the first grade as part of learning about numbers. (We didn't have pre-school/kindergarten where I grew up.) I knew what money was before that so maybe 5 or so?

I recall that my allowance was 25 cents and I could earn a bit more by doing things like organizing the kitchen drawers or cabinets. Sweeping floors, etc were chores we were expected to do, so I thought chores and allowances were things we got or did just for being children.

I used my allowance for small items at Woolworth's maybe once every other week, but I never had expectations of buying or receiving toys except for Christmas or my birthday. No one else I knew had a lot of toys and the Sears catalog was the only place to see things available out in the world. We played outdoors with whatever we could find to fuel our imaginations.

Perhaps some little kids don't understand the concept of money because nowadays so many people pay with cards. When I was little, and actually growing up, people paid with cash. I can't remember a time that I didn't know about money.

When I was in the first grade, we had to write a story about the life of a penny, describing how it went from one place to the next. My story was the longest one.

I was pretty young. I grew up back in the day when kids received an allowance, or we received silver dollars when we accomplished something like winning a spelling bee or in our stocking or from our aunties for Christmas. We were told to save the solver dollars and we did. My Dad was a successful businessman and we kids had to save for things we wanted to buy.

We also had those little folders the banks used to give out that held a few dollars two of dimes when you filled up the slots. Plus schools had saving programs for kids through the local bank. Once a week you would bring money to the school in a little manila envelope with your money and the bankbook enclosed. It would be returned to you and the process repeated every week. I had my own little bank account from the age of six both through the school and the one my mother opened for me.

I probably started learning about money as a toddler. Money bought candy so you saved it up. My parents both came from huge families so we learned frugality as a way of life.

I started explaining money to my kids early on. I also explained the basics of how a credit card worked. They knew daddy worked for that money. The money was kept elsewhere. Everything was handled through the computer. I explained it in very basic details and they caught on. I always made sure to explain that we had money 'sitting' in the bank so they didn't think it was some magic to it. They knew we the money came from what we had stored at the bank.

I can't recall not knowing about money, at least that it was used to exchange for things and that it was in short supply in our home. Of course, Mom and Dad worked for money, I knew.

Around age 4, my two years older brother and I went to spend a portion of the summer with a much better off aunt and uncle. I am told that they would take us out and ask things like, "Would you like a hamburger?...Would you like that toy tractor?... May I buy you that book?...Let me buy you that watercolor set," to which we would politely reply, "No, thank you." We had strongly internalized that you just don't use money when not necessary. It was only when I was an older child that this story was repeated back to me and I found out that it was considered unusual.

adellabella, I like how you explained "modern" money to your kids, including the thought that having money is the result of real work, not magic.

I used to love playing with those plastic "mills" that Missouri used for sales tax when I was a small child. They were some sort of plastic/celluloid and came in two colors. No idea when they stopped being used.

Anglophilia! I dug up one of those in one of my gardens something like 35 years ago! It was red and quite small. It was denominated as a fraction of a cent (1/4? 1/2?) , if I recall. I wonder what I ever did with that.