It's a basic course designed to teach children how to prioritise their spending. The course costs HK$800 for four one-hour sessions. 'Many grown-ups also don't have a clue where their money goes,' Paine says. That's why she's introduced a similar programme for adults.

Teresa Leung Hou-lam discovered through her eldest son, Theo, how children from well-off backgrounds can find it difficult to grasp the concept of budgeting.

She used to top up the 11-year-old's Octopus card to HK$200 at the start of each week to buy lunch at school, but he would invariably overspend his allowance on snacks. 'The temptation with Octopus is the vending machines accepts payment even when there isn't enough money on the card,' Leung says. 'Whenever I ask [Theo] how he used up all the money, he gets annoyed and refuses to discuss it.'

Worried that her children would become squanderers if they didn't acquire a sensible attitude to spending early on, she signed up Theo and his brother, Tobie, eight, for Paine's classes.

Combining her parenting experience with her chartered accountancy training, plus expertise gleaned from attending financial conferences, Paine spent a year drawing up programmes that would make a potentially mind-numbing subject fun for youngsters.

She designed role-play and other activities to help hold their attention while exploring basic concepts about money.

In initial sessions, preschoolers are usually bewildered by the different denominations of notes and coins, and older kids may not understand the concept of foreign currencies and financial instruments such as credit cards and cheques.

Children need pictures to visualise concepts, Paine says. So she created cartoon characters Credit Cat and Squirrel Spencer to illustrate abstract ideas. For instance, Paine has the cartoon cat compare money to milk, and a bank to a fridge where the drink is stored. As for the credit card, it's like a long drinking straw that's used to siphon milk from the fridge without you seeing it - until the bill arrives at the end of the month.

'[Young children] don't know much about a bank and find it very mysterious. They don't know how it works or how the ATM machine works,' Paine says.

In role-play, children are guided to distinguish between impulse buys and budgeted spending by presenting them with a hypothetical situation where they have to make choices.

For instance, Paine asks the youngsters to pretend that they're at a beach where there are a lot of things to buy, but reminds them that they need to set aside some money for the bus home.

'Some spend all their money, I ask them whether buying a teddy bear is more useful than the return bus ticket. We discuss which is more important.

'They will remember better by living in the story,' Paine says. 'We learn by mistakes. I organise a game for them to make mistakes, instead of learning from real life when they grow older and manage their own money.'

Older children learn from more sophisticated exercises, in which they may be asked to draw up a simple budget for their spending and to check make-believe bank statements. All are designed to build their habit of planning, tracking and controlling their budget.

'Young people are always tempted to spend their first pay roll. It's important to instil the notion of budgeting before they start working and live by themselves. What I do is more about how they behave with their money than maths. Managing a budget is a skill for life,' Paine says.

At the Basic Force Education Centre in Lai Chi Kok, training director Raymond Wong Siu-man spotted a similar niche in the tuition market four years ago. He, too, launched money management classes for children, but took a different approach.

The power of money is drummed into students, not just its value. During classes, older children are asked what they can buy with a given sum, and urged to compete in totting up banknotes. Younger children are asked to fit jigsaw puzzles formed from banknotes.

Wong says his kids' financial management (CEO) programme incorporates theories from child psychology guru Jean Piaget with basic knowledge about money management and investment theory. Aimed at children between eight and 14, he charges HK$1,200 for 15 one-hour sessions.

In one session, students are guided to discuss advertisements that may lead consumers into making irrational purchases, Wong says.

'We use advertisements from newspaper and magazines and ask students which ones are trying to fool them,' he says. 'Some students are smart enough to point out that those who use beautiful models to sell properties are sending inaccurate message because those pretty women in the ads don't live in those flats.'

Wong rejects criticism that the approach would turn children in to money-obsessed adults.

'It depends on how you teach them. We tell children they can make more wealth by using their money on investments. But we also introduce the idea of making donations,' he says.

Educators such as Mervyn Cheung Man-ping suggest financial management, which involves more abstract concepts, is a subject better suited for secondary students. But there's no harm in introducing the idea to young children if the programme is in the form of games rather than serious study, he says.

In most schools, the attention is focused on students' academic performance and technological knowledge, with little time left for teaching basic values such as budgeting.

But parents make the best role models by not adopting wasteful lifestyles and spending wisely, says Cheung, who also chairs the lobby group Hong Kong Education Policy Concern Organisation.

'When children break their toys, parents shouldn't just immediately buy them another or the youngsters will never learn how to cherish things in life,' he says.