The good folks at the National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) have been busy. They commissioned a frequently cited survey a few years back that showed how financially illiterate many adults and teenagers are. (If you dare, test your own financial literacy.)

For example: "Half (52%) of all adults know that the existence of the stock market brings people who want to buy stocks together with those who want to sell stocks. Students are much less likely than adults (38% vs. 52%) to understand that the existence of the stock market helps buyers and sellers find each other."

Overall, only 16% of American adults scored an A or B on the financial literacy test, with the average score a paltry 57%. High school students fared somewhat worse, earning an average score of 48%. Just 10% earned grades of A or B.

In more recent NCEE news, the Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) Foundation has signed up to sponsor (for the fourth year in a row) the NCEE/Goldman Sachs Foundation National Economics Challenge, an economics-based "college-bowl-like competition that blends the excitement of an athletic competition with the pursuit of academic excellence."

Meanwhile, JP Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is also working to help young people learn more about money, sponsoring an exhibit titled "Once Upon a Dime: The World of Money." And the Citigroup (NYSE:C) Foundation has teamed with Maryland Public Television, supporting the "Sense and Dollars" website.

If you don't want your children to be stressed out financially for the rest of their lives, and if you hope that one day they'll be able to park you in a first-class nursing home, you'd do well to make sure that they grow up learning how to manage money. We can help them in our Teens and Their Money area.

If your teens have already got some financial experiences under their belts, encourage them to share those and they might win our $1,000 contest, which ends soon. Get more details here and read about last year's winner, too.