As parents, we have encouraged our children to avoid spending all of their money. We teach them to spend some but also save for a rainy day. Even before they were old enough to have savings accounts, we would tell them the story of the ant and the grasshopper.
My son is a high school senior. He works as a "food runner" at a nearby restaurant. A food runner brings the food to the table. He does not take the customer's order - a waiter or waitress does that. Food runners can also help out the waiters and waitresses by cleaning up the table after the customer leaves. True to the spirit in which he was raised, our son has a savings account. Today he got his bank statement for his "life savings":
I kid you not. You can actually have a balance of $11,312.79 and get 8 cents in interest. Try convincing a teenager that he should put money in the bank, so he can earn interest. We might as well all be grasshoppers.