Important things parents should teach their children - teaching kids about money the hard way

It's really strange, but sometimes I am happy I was born in a poor family. I grew up watching my parents struggling to make ends meet. It was often a struggle for them to put food on the table everyday from the beginning to the end of the month, or should I say from one week to the next because my father was paid on a weekly basis. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. She never had a full time job, but that was to be expected since she raised 10 children. However, this doesn't mean she didn't contribute to the family budget. She did her best to augment my Dad's income. Sometimes it's impossible for me to comprehend how she managed to do the things she used to do in addition to raising 10 kids.
My mom did the following tasks, among other things, to help put food on the table:
- sew clothes for us (I am not talking about mending here. I mean brand new clothes),
- made table cloths for selling,
- had a garden where she grew vegetables (of course, surplus vegetables were sold),
- was a member of a so-called burial society where she and her friends would contribute a certain amount of money every week allowing one of them to buy something of greater value than they would otherwise be able to purchase
- even ran a small poultry business on our tiny front yard that left us with almost no walking space.
"A penny served is a penny earned" - Benjamin Franklin
Experience is the best teacher

- who don't have to work as hard as I did when I was young, if at all,
- they never have to miss lunch because there is no money to buy the lunch,
- They don't have to make their own toys because their room is already full of them,
- They don't see their parents struggling to make ends meet.
Image credit 401(K) 2013