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A letter recently arrived, addressed to my 9-year-old son. A local credit union sent it, informing him that his $900 certificate of deposit would soon renew.

Until that point, my son had no clue he had that kind of money. But over dinner that night I gave him the letter, explaining that his mom and I have been stashing a few dollars in the account every now and then -- usually part of the birthday and holiday money he receives -- and that this represents the sum of those efforts to this point.

"This is my money? Really?" he asked. "Cool. What's a CD?"

Amy, my wife, looked at me and mouthed silently, "Why'd you tell him?"

Why, indeed? It's a great question, rooted in one of the more challenging slopes of family finance: disclosure.

Whether good, bad or ugly, every family has a financial story to tell. When it comes to your kids, the question is, how much of that story to share? Do you tell your child, for instance, you received a big bonus or some other unexpected windfall? What if you face an unexpectedly large expense or a reduction in your income?

All parents must teach their children about money. But where are the boundaries? When is information about the financial highs and lows that all families go through something kids need to know? And when is it, as my son likes to say when I start to drone on about some topic that bores him, too much information?

* * *

This certificate-of-deposit episode isn't the first time Amy and I have found ourselves at odds over this issue. When I signed my first book contract a few years ago, I shared the news with Amy and my son. He was 6½ years old at the time. Amy questioned my actions then, too.

I fully realized that the sum of money I mentioned meant nothing to my son; I included him in the conversation because I see our family finances as an invaluable way to start his financial education. With the book-contract money, he could see how a family manages the unpredictable moments that routinely flow through life. He could see that we put most of that money aside, to build up our safety net. But he could also see that we used some of that money to buy things that we normally wouldn't have considered.

Did he fully understand those actions? Not likely. But it was a start. Understanding that additional income is an opportunity to both improve your financial security and treat yourself to a marginally improved standard of living is a worthy message and one that, at its core, he could begin to grasp at that age.

Amy had -- and continues to have -- a different take on this. She thinks our son is too young for this kind of family-finance detail. It's fine, she says, for him to think about saving and spending when it comes to his allowance. Those are things he comprehends. But the numbers involved in the book contract or his CD are too big for him to fathom. All it does is make him want to go out and spend it -- and he can't. So, she asks, why tell him?

A longtime friend raised a different sort of issue, when he asked me a good question that I struggled to answer: "So," he wondered, "would you tell him if you had lost that same amount of money?"

What if, for instance, an investment went sour? Would I tell my son I'm feeling stressed financially? What if I lost a job and had to find work that paid substantially less -- would I share the news that the amount of money our family has to live on is now markedly lower? What if money is tight for whatever reason and we're unable to buy him something we might otherwise have afforded -- how much should he know about the shortcomings in Mom and Dad's checking account?

Here's the problem: If you share only good news, you risk creating a child who's blasé about money, who grows up assuming that money is easy to come by. Share the bad news, and you risk creating a child addled by financial anxiety.

* * *

Parents I've been talking to have different approaches to finding the right balance between just enough and too much information.

A single mom I'm friends with is pinched financially, but doesn't want her daughter to worry about it. She believes you can teach kids about money and financial priorities without burdening them with the details. When she earned some extra money from a project, and decided to use that money for a down payment on a house, she didn't give her daughter details about the amount of money.

But, she says, "I told her I had taken on some extra work, and that it was going to help us afford the house we wanted. It was important for her to know this because I needed her to support my extra work hours and realize that by making a small sacrifice now, we would both benefit. I really think it's important that kids make the connection between working hard and getting paid. They need to understand that money is a limited resource and you want to use it for necessities and priorities and not waste it. Those are values that never change regardless of whether your financial fortune is rising or falling."

I know I'm inconsistent in the message I send to my son. I'll tell him he has $900 in his CD or that Dad got a nice book advance, but I said nothing when his mom quit her job and we were living on one paycheck for a while.

In many ways, I think, my New Orleans friends, Drew and Colleen, have the balance just right.

They give their kids a sense of the big picture, "and let them know when something special -- either good or bad -- happens," Drew says. But they strive to put the event into context, explaining why it has happened so that their kids can feel secure that everything is OK.

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