After almost two decades reporting and writing financial stories, I’ve seen my fair share of shocking news and hard interviews on challenging issues. So when someone brings up a potential story idea to me, I often approach investigating an issue from a position of intellectual curiosity, thoughtfulness, and sometimes skepticism.

But last week was one of those times when my breath was taken away as I listened to the story of Axton Betz, 30, who is an assistant professor of Consumer Studies at Eastern Illinois University. Axton is the victim of identify theft – unfortunately a common predicament in our digital world today – but what’s different about her story is that her identity was taken, unbeknownst to her and her parents, when she was 11 years old.

She discovered it as a sophomore in college when she rented her first apartment. The electric company required her to send in a $100 deposit in order to open an account because of her credit rating. Thinking that it was because she was 19 with no credit history, she called the credit bureau out of curiosity for a copy of her report. A 10-page package arrived six weeks later with the bad news that the person who had stolen her identity had left her with a rating of 380, in the second percentile.

“I thought to myself, I’m never going to have anything,” Axton said. “How am I ever going to be able to buy a car, buy a house – To this day, I still don’t know who did it.”

I was invited to attend a play at Somerville High School yesterday called, "Money Matters." Produced by the Underground Railway Theater, the theater-in-residence at Central Square Theater in Cambridge, the production was written by its 16 youth members as part of a Cambridge Savings Bank-sponsored financial education initiative.

The young actors and actresses took part in CSB’s Smart Financial Education Program to help them understand some money managing basics, and then went out and interviewed at least 80 individuals of various ages, ethnicities and professions to get their thoughts on key money issues.

The students took actual quotes from the interviews and wove them together into a series of conversations that talked about everything from spending one’s paycheck every week ("I love the feeling of having made a purchase, but I hate the feeling of having no money ...") to the fiscal inequities that people sometimes face when they go to college. ("Economic diversity is something that I have to learn to live with … I’m at college and I care about community, but where does caring about community end?")

The storylines were linked together by one central character – the tooth fairy – who was prompting the conversations by engaging in a “tooth fairy stimulus package.” Each character received $100 per tooth and then the tooth fairy watched their responses and actions to having the money.

Why the tooth fairy? According to the organizers it was because across the board, people who were interviewed said that their first memory of dealing with money was when the tooth fairy paid them a visit. The tooth fairy was also apparently the cause of a lot of discussion about money and equity since many people had different opinions, and experiences, about the value of a tooth.

While the play was interesting, what really caught my attention was the Q&A period after. The kids in the audience needed a little prompting to talk about the topics brought forward, but it was interesting to hear what had made an impression on them. One student said that she had never really understood the difference between a debit and a credit card, and the impact that interest can have on one’s budget.

“The world of credit is a mysterious world to kids of this age,” said Evan Diamond, an assistant vice president and Financial Education Program Manager for Cambridge Savings Bank. “They need to understand that every time you get a credit card you are taking out a loan. Showing them how much interest you will pay if you fall into the trap of minimum payments is a real wake up call.”

Several other students said they were struck by a monologue about a student who went to Haiti and learned the meaning of money for survival’s sake as opposed to just pure spending.

“We try to connect the emotions with the action” through the community program, Diamond said.

CSB started its Smart Financial Education Program in 2010 in response to the financial crisis, Diamond said. The bank has a team of educators who visit schools as well as a variety of community centers to provide an overview on a core curriculum of four modules: Budgeting and Saving; Managing a Checking Account; Credit Smarts; Fraud Smarts. They also customize their classes to fit a particular area, for example they might discuss finance to students interested in entrepreneurship and business, or they might discuss interest rates and mathematics concepts in a math class.

The team has taught more than 300 sessions, reaching 4,6000 participants at high schools in towns including Lexington, Arlington, Belmont and Concord, as well as non-profit groups such as the Community Learning Center in Cambridge and the Somerville Homeless Coalition. This spring they’ll be reaching out to kindergartners at a variety of schools in order to encourage kids to think about saving starting at a young age. Diamond emphasized that the group does not provide promotional materials on CSB at these events since “we don’t do this to sell accounts.”

“Managing money is tricky,” Diamond said. “It’s nice to be able to give them good advice.

I call my six-year-old son my little capitalist because he is always trying to volunteer the many different ways that he can make a buck. When he was four, his eyes lit up when I explained (in preschool language) the concept of interest and why that justified depositing his collection of coins in the savings account. He is more than happy to count our soda cans, and calculate the number of nickels he should receive, as long as he gets to keep the full amount. And he cheerfully does any number of tasks around the house for a small bribe.

Now he wants an allowance. I have three rules about a weekly arrangement: First, my kids must be fluent in identifying the different coins, etc. and in counting change. Second, they must have demonstrated, over an extended period of time, an ability to keep track of any dollars and cents they have in their possession, either by responsibly storing them in a wallet or in a piggy bank. Third, they must complete a set of chores each week.

Divvying up household responsibilities between my older son and daughter sometimes becomes a chore in and of itself. I want the tasks to advance with their age and abilities – and they want to see a relative rise in allowance amounts as their responsibilities increase.

So I found myself once again in search of a tool to help me organize this new family assignment. As I shopped for kid birthday gifts and the like at stores, I would look over the various charts and calendars I could hang on my kitchen bulletin board. As cute as they were, I didn’t see myself maintaining the system. Not to mention I had already promised myself to try to reduce paper.

So back to the online tools I went. And in doing a search, I came across the site DoughMain.com.

Boston.com readers had a lot to add in their comments to the survey questions. Read some of them here – and share yours in the comments section of the blog.

Bank of America Corp. yesterday released a statement saying that it has decided not to move forward with its proposed $5 monthly debit card fee. As reported in the Boston Globe, customers had petitioned the bank, and mobilized to close their accounts, to avoid the fee. Bank of America’s decision followed similar moves by other large banks, including JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.

Bank of America’s decision should come as no surprise to Boston.com readers. Among those individuals who completed the survey from my blog post yesterday, more than 82 percent said that they would consider switching banks if their institution started charging monthly debit card fees. Among those surveyed, more than 70 percent said they use debit cards regularly for making purchases.

Do you use a large, national bank or a smaller, regional one? Personally, I’ve never chosen simply because of size. Usually my decision is based on need for certain services. In recent years, my decision was driven mainly by accessibility to a relatively wide variety of online banking services. I was willing to accept a certain level of trade-off between fees and convenience.

I think like many consumers, in recent weeks I’ve been taking a second, harder look at my bank and the fees it charges. Ever since Bank of America Corp. and several other national financial providers proposed charging monthly debit card fees, I’ve been asking myself, “What am I willing to pay for, and how much?”