Sign of the times: sign your kid up for personal finance summer camp!

Somehow, I missed out on the joys of summer camp, unless you count watching Bill Murray in Meatballs about 700 times during my youth, and learning how to walk in time and play a baritone under the hot sun during two summers of band camp. Both--Bill Murray and band camp--were fun, but I've often wondered if my life might be a little more complete had I spent a week or two fishing and swimming and hanging out with kids my own age at a bunkhouse.

So at first I wasn't sure what to make of Money 101, a new personal finance summer camp for kids in the Washington, D.C. area. It doesn't sound like there will be a lot of sack races.

But it doesn't really matter. The kids can go to a summer camp with the sack races, the fishing hole and crafts table some other year. Maybe they won't learn how to sneak the camp owner's bed to the middle of the lake the way they did in Meatballs, but it sounds like a kid at a personal finance summer camp may leave with the skills that will let them figure out how to fund their own movie about summer camp. Not a bad trade-off.