Talking to your parents about money can be like talking to your parents about sex: awkward, tense and ultimately not very informative. My folks never sat me down for a chat about the birds and the bees, nor did we ever gather at the kitchen table for a heart-to-heart about budgeting and compound interest. I suppose they figured that in both cases experience would be the best teacher. And so it was. But if there ever was a time for parents to prepare their kids for the cold, hard facts about money, that time is now. Because young people today face financial challenges their parents never had to face. Those challenges can be summed up in a single word: debt, primarily from student loans and credit cards.

It's hard to underestimate the continuing influence a mother has on a person's life. Whether you see or speak with your mother daily or you now have only the memory of your mother, whether your relationship with your mother was happy or troubled, many things from our early days shape our character. Personalities, outlooks and habits are formed from the interaction children have with the people who raise them. As people grow older, many find themselves doing or saying things that cause them to stop with the funny realization they've just done something exactly the way their mother would have done.

There's no shortage of information about how to handle money. Money lessons are learned every day from conversations with family and friends, from employers, from newspaper articles and television shows and from in-depth counseling from CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certificants and other financial service professionals. Let CFP Board know where you've learned the best lessons. After you have completed the survey, take a look at how you compare to others who answered this question.

It's no secret that mutual funds are increasingly becoming a dominant part of the investment landscape in America, especially as Americans increasingly rely on self-directed investments to supplement company pensions or provide the main source for retirement funds. It's also no secret that the management of mutual funds can be complicated and confusing. In 2000, Fund Democracy was established by Mercer Bullard to help give mutual fund shareholders a voice in the management and regulation of the mutual funds they own. Read more about Fund Democracy and the progress that has been made to make the mutual fund industry more transparent to its shareholders.

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