I was listening to NPR on my drive to work one morning. A high-school senior was lamenting that his parents couldn’t afford his pricey, first-choice college.

Tuition at the college is $40,000 a year, the young man said. Still, he was encouraging his parents to “stretch” to help him pay the bill.

Meanwhile, the father told an NPR reporter incredulously, “We’ve never even earned $40,000 a year (in this household) in our lives.”

What we have here is a failure to communicate. What the parents saw as a financial Mount Everest, the son saw as a speed bump.

“Listen to this,” I instructed my 7-year-old son, who was sitting in the back seat. “This teenager on the radio is talking about paying for college.”

I could see him perk up and listen.

“This teenager is really smart,” I told him. “But he has no idea how much $40,000 is or how long his parents have to work to make that much money.”

I talk to my son about his college savings account. I try to reduce it to terms he can understand. “You’ve got enough to buy, like, a bunch of Wii machines,” I told him recently, handing him his account statement.

His response: Wow, that’s cool, Daddy, but why can’t we just have a bunch of imaginary Wii machines and one real one?

“Good,” I thought. “He’s learning to negotiate.”

For better or worse, I began my older son’s financial education several years ago. Until they start putting personal-finance questions on the SAT, smart kids will probably be ill-prepared for real life — unless, that is, parents start teaching them money basics as youngsters.

I’m convinced that the realestate bubble, in part, was caused by young adults who thought they could move from a college dorm into granitecountertop suburbia without passing Go.

My 7-year-old son and I talk a lot about money and the economy. We talk about parents losing jobs and what that means for families with kids. He can explain health and life insurance, and he understands why people save for retirement.

One day earlier this week, we passed a car dealership on the way to school. The place looked deserted.

“Daddy, where are all the people?” my son asked.

“Well,” I said, “people aren’t buying as many cars these days because they are afraid they’ll lose their jobs and won’t be able to pay for them.”

“Oh,” he said.

I took the chance to talk to him about bank loans, how adults borrow large sums and pay it back to the bank in monthly installments.

“What happens if you can’t pay the bank?” he said.

“Well, after a few months, a nice man comes at night with a wrecker and takes your car back to the bank,” I said.

Later that day, I had him explain the mechanics of auto loans to my wife to make sure he had absorbed the lesson. He passed. Call me crazy, but I’m determined my son will know more about personal finance at 13 than I knew at 30.

If we parents can seize this period of national anxiety to teach our children about the value of a dollar, maybe we can avoid another national calamity like the one we’re living through now.