I spoke to two personal finance management classes at Forest Lake High School this morning and shared with them this list of what I think are five important money principals to get down before heading out into the real world:

1. Live within your means and find a way to track your finances that enables you to do so for the rest of your life.

2. Get into the habit of saving something, anything. And delay the purchase of something meaningful to you while you save so you can experience how good it feels.

3. Sweat the small stuff. Read the fine print so you can understand the numerous ways financial institutions can nickel and dime you. Keep tabs on fees and interest rates and surcharges. Understand fine print can also reveal jewels that can help you maximize your money.

4. Understand your money personality. Are you a person who can use credit responsibly? Are you better with cash? Are you a natural spender or saver? The sooner you undersrtand yourself, the easier it will be to find ways to optimally operate in the complex financial world in which we live.

5. Get credit. Not just open a credit card and learn how to use it. Get credit as in understand how it works.*

*I was surprised to learn that of the 60 or so students I spoke with zero had a credit card. I found this surprising. I learned to use a credit card when I was a junion in high school. I was an authorized user on my parents’ account, an arrangement that worked well.

Some might applaud the declining use of credit amongst teens. To me, I worry that it delays teaching them the basics until they are on their own, without watchful parents ensuring that they aren’t royally goofing up. What’s your opinion?

And what advice would you share with high school juniors and seniors?

I am now 31 and thank goodness! According to a new book released yesterday called “The Dumbest Generation,” by Mark Bauerlein, you should not trust anyone under 30 because they got stoopid using the Internet. Bauerlein is an English professor at Emory University who has also lamented the death of literature readers as a researcher for the NEA.

I haven’t gotten my hands on the book yet, but come, now. I know he wants to sell books (and I may even pick up a copy and READ it since at at my age I am only on the cusp of being dumb), but where does he get off calling millions of people a “bad word,” as my kids would say?

I came across the book and its thesis at the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtor’s blog: The Skinny.

I’ve always been a proponent of making money a less taboo subject. Then we can finally put those Joneses to rest and perhaps some of the credit card debt along with ‘em.

Today, the Wall Street Journal’s work and family blog The Juggle has a post about whether sharing salary could be beneficial, helping to reduce salary disparities at work and eliminate the sometimes damaging assumptions that people might have about who makes what.

The blog mentioned a story in The New York Times from a couple of weeks back that I’m surprised I missed (Oh– they put it in the Fashion section– I guess it’s fashionable to talk salary).

Anyway, the story is about how people in their 20s and 30s are more likely to share their salaries with each other than workers in older generations.

It’s a thought provoking story, but when I read this paragraph, I couldn’t help but think, oh puh-leeze:

For people old enough to remember phone booths, a blunt reference to salary in a social setting still represents the height of bad manners. But for many young professionals, the don’t-ask-don’t-tell etiquette of previous generations seems like a relic.

There was a phone book junking up my front steps when I got home from work yesterday. They aren’t like do-do birds or dinosaurs. Clearly I am so old that I need glasses, or so young that I hadn’t even heard of those booth-things so I figured it must be a typo. Sorry for the confusion.

And I bet that most people still don’t reveal their salaries without at least considering whether they should first– even if they are 25.

I’ll say from my experience that salary still is not a comfortable discussion in my circle of friends.

What do you think? And if you’ve been dying to tell people how much you make, or are willing to trade your salary in a “safe place” in order to gain insight on others’ salaries, do spill.

Ameriprise conducted a survey last spring about different generations’ money attitudes and beliefs.

Here’s an excerpt of the release:

Forty-six percent of the adult children of boomers say they are very optimistic about their personal financial future, compared to 39 percent of boomers and only 28 percent of the boomers’ parents’ generation who report they are very optimistic about their financial future.

Likewise, 48 percent of the adult children of boomers say that they are very confident in their ability to reach all of their financial goals over time; only 36 percent of boomers and 34 percent of boomers’ parents feel the same way.

To me, these numbers speak more to time constraints than anything. It’s a lot harder to feel confident about financial futures and reaching financial goals if you’re 90 years old. You’re not working, you have a finite amount of money and have a lot of time to sit around and watch your nest egg shrink and grow with the day’s market gyrations. When you do venture out to the store you see the price of groceries and medicine rising above the bump in your Social Security check that’s supposed to cover cost of living increases.

The press release highlighted how younger generations are more optimistic than their parents. But to me, what stands out is that more than half of those surveyed are worried.

Maybe I just run with a gloomy crowd, but I’m not hearing from “very confident,” “very optimistic” people– in my personal life or in my work.

Instead, I hear a generation concerned about a future of higher taxes, wage stagnation, job insecurity, an American economy poised to take a backseat to the “third world,” and college tuition inflation.

I am hopeful that I will have a decades-long, satisfying career and decades-long enjoyable retirement. But I am worried about some of what I mentioned above.

How about you? Confident about your financial future? Confident, but concerned? Or are your genuinely worried? And why?

I spent the past four days in Washington at a fellowship examining retirement issues in the 21st century.

I learned some, debated some and came home with lots of data about the graying of our society.

For those of you living on another planet (or another generation who wrongly believes these issues have nothing to do with you), the gist is that there are a lot of people about to enter their senior years, that they are living longer, that health care is growing more expensive, that they aren’t saving enough, and that they might run out of money unless they work longer (if they are healthy enough to do so and can find employers willing to hire them).

As I sat listening to presentation after presentation about these issues, I started reflecting upon my own savings. I’m not expecting a 30 year retirement consisting of travel and bingo (although I’m game for both). I figure I’ll earn some money doing work I enjoy until I’m at least 70 if i’m healthy. Yet I am always planning for retirement using calculators designed for a “retire at 65 and you’re done” mentality.

Does that mean that I could possibly be saving too much? Yes, especially if my husband and I both see our pensions and and if Social Security survives and if we stay healthy and if we get an inheritance or help paying for college and if the market doesn’t tank right as we retire and if and if and if.

This is my long-winded way of saying that I’m going to keep saving under the old paradigm because I don’t want to be someone who outlives her money.

On the other hand, check out this chart from a presentation given by Barbara Bovbjerg from the Government Accountability Office. It basically shows that if a 35-year-old today delays retirement, the percentage their salary they need to save drops from around 12 percent per year if hanging it up at age 62 to saving roughly 4 percent if they plan to work until age 70.

Do you think you’ll retire after age 65? How do you imagine retirement will be like for Gen X and Y?