Stepfather, who controls 17-year-old worker's finances, lectures the teen after teen calls him to ask him to deposit his paycheck so that he can afford a bus ticket home: 'I called my stepfather, with the intent to ask him about my paycheck'

A teenager calls his stepfather about a delayed paycheck needed for transport, only to get a lecture about responsibility from the very person who is controlling access to his earnings. Fiscal responsibility is an important lesson for parents to teach their children. But when does controlling a teen's bank account go too far? When I was a teen, my parents helped me with my money to teach me the ins and outs of financial responsibility.At around 12 years old, they took me to open my first joint bank account. The local credit union gave you these wooden coin tokens each time you made a deposit of a certain amount, which counted toward a small bonus if you collected enough. It definitely gave a certain satisfaction watching the savings grow there from the odd allowance and odd jobs. I'll admit that I had a strong temptation, often, to spend more of it than I should on Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards. But it was far more satisfying to watch that amount grow into something bigger that I really wanted but couldn't afford and didn't want to wait until my next birthday to get. This lesson in fiscal responsibility was pretty important to me as a young teen, then in my later teens and in…

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