Teenagers with money

I've been trying to get my son and daughter to start thinking about their financial future now but as they're in their twenties, they think they have plenty of time to worry about boring things like superannuation and buying a house. Do you have any ideas of how I might shock them into getting smart with their money?

The best example I've seen looks at the situation of a young person aged 21 who starts putting $2000 into a superannuation fund that returns 8% on average. This person contributes religiously for nine years and stops at age 30. When this person retires, his nest egg rolls over and balloons to around $550,000!

On the other hand, a more irresponsible young girl plays up until age 30 and refuses to play the super game. However, at 30, she gets wise and starts putting $2000 into super each year until she retires at age 65. Her lump sum on retirement winds up being around $440,000. So she has put in $2000 a year for 35 years and ends up with close to $100,000 less than the responsible young man. And remember, he only put in $18,000!

The reason is the effect of compound interest. If he kept up his $2000 contribution, he would've topped a million on retirement.
Now I know we all have 9% going into super from our jobs but experts say we should be saving 14% of our income for most of our working life to be comfortable in retirement.

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