Yeah, I didn't learn money management from my parents, I learned financial anxiety from our parents. I learned to fear scarcity. I didn't learn how to use money efficiently, I learned that I needed to figure out how to use money efficiently[^1]. If you are financially secure, I think the best bet for financially-secure parents who are trying to raise frugal kids is to teach gratitude and contentment. Teach them to look with compassion at people who are lower on the social ladder rather than looking up with envy. Maybe try to help them understand how precarious and insecure you feel when you're poor, but also how happiness is divorced from wealth--deep joy comes from relationships, the natural world, etc. The happiness from purchased things is fleeting and superficial. To summarize, before parents can teach kids how to manage money, I think parents need to build the emotional connection around "why they should manage money". At least that's sort of how it worked for me.
[^1]: This sort of contextualizes how I feel about student loan forgiveness--it's ostensibly there to help people in need, but I lived frugally and worked my way through my engineering degree to minimize the amount of loan money I needed to take out, while the overwhelming majority of my peers partied, skipped class, lived in the dorms, paid for meal plans and then ate out at restaurants all the time, and majored in unmarketable programs. They didn't work and they got money from their parents every week. I never resented them for being able to afford their lifestyle or anything, but loan forgiveness feels like it's mostly bailing out those spoiled kids in the name of helping poor kids (although I'm sure there are some poor kids who will benefit). Lots of poor kids didn't even go to school in the first place, and many who did were frugal. If this really were about helping poor kids, there are so many significantly better approaches.
And mind you, I benefit from loan forgiveness because frankly my wife was one of those spoiled kids (with lots of debt and an unmarketable degree) and we didn't pay off her loans because the interest rates were so low it was better to use the money for other investments, especially during deferment (which is why it also irks me when people refer to student loan interest rates as "predatory"--there's lots of predation in higher education, but it's not interest rates). But (and seems to blow a lot of minds) just because it benefits me doesn't make it right.
[^1]: This sort of contextualizes how I feel about student loan forgiveness--it's ostensibly there to help people in need, but I lived frugally and worked my way through my engineering degree to minimize the amount of loan money I needed to take out, while the overwhelming majority of my peers partied, skipped class, lived in the dorms, paid for meal plans and then ate out at restaurants all the time, and majored in unmarketable programs. They didn't work and they got money from their parents every week. I never resented them for being able to afford their lifestyle or anything, but loan forgiveness feels like it's mostly bailing out those spoiled kids in the name of helping poor kids (although I'm sure there are some poor kids who will benefit). Lots of poor kids didn't even go to school in the first place, and many who did were frugal. If this really were about helping poor kids, there are so many significantly better approaches.
And mind you, I benefit from loan forgiveness because frankly my wife was one of those spoiled kids (with lots of debt and an unmarketable degree) and we didn't pay off her loans because the interest rates were so low it was better to use the money for other investments, especially during deferment (which is why it also irks me when people refer to student loan interest rates as "predatory"--there's lots of predation in higher education, but it's not interest rates). But (and seems to blow a lot of minds) just because it benefits me doesn't make it right.