Most of our kids have no idea how to earn money, spend money or even give people charitable contributions, according to research commissioned by Junior Achievement and the Jackson Charitable Foundation. In a survey of 500 American kids ages seven to 10 years old, the JA-Jackson Children’s Financial Literacy Survey found kids are actually excited when adults talk about money. Yet only 25 percent of them knew why a person would put money in a bank or that it’s possible to earn interest on savings.

“The message to parents is simple,” says Jack E. Kosakowski, president and chief executive officer of Junior Achievement USA. “It’s never too early to teach your children the short and long-term rewards of saving and spending money wisely.”

Okay, we hear you. Here are three concepts to teach today.

Need vs. want: At the youngest ages, we have to teach our kids that the things we actually need are things important for our survival: food, clothing, healthcare and education. Everything else – like the entire inventory at Target – is what we want. We fund our needs first and  while we’ll never have everything we want, that’s a good thing.

Spending plans: Those are the buzz words for “budgets” these days because it feels more positive and less restrictive. Plus, the concept doesn’t mean teaching your 8 year old to use spreadsheets either. Simply involve them in simple family decisions involving money and time. For example, letting kids help decide whether you all should go out to dinner, go to the movies, or stay in and next weekend do both. Is it vacation time? Should you drive or fly, get separate hotel rooms or go to an extra amusement park.   

Interest: This is the price of money and banks will pay us a small fee — the interest rate — for depositing our money instead of spending it. In fact, when we spend our money we don’t just give up the money but we also forfeit the interest we would have earned by saving it. Oh, and interest compounds, meaning your interest starts to earn interest.

Actually, this initiative has lots of games for kids, including music videos that teach financial literacy.