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If they ever show interest, sure. It's not something I keep guarded. It would be fairly easy to figure out, anyway, not much fluctuation in our fields.
I knew how much my parents made, and DH's family is also very open with finances.

ETA: More high school age - definitely not a young kid, there's no reason a young child would need to know that information

Maybe when they are older and have more of a concept of money. Like if they are trying to figure out careers and want to know of x amount of money is what they want for living.

Not until they are much older, but even then, I don't think so.

I don't think it's important for kids to know how much their parents make. Like @looch said, kids don't know what's right or wrong to say so I could just see it getting to friends parents and our friends and our friends don't need to know what we make. I found out sometime after college what my parents made.

I think it's important to talk honestly and openly about finances, budgeting, estate planning, etc. as a family. My parents did not do that when I was growing up and were very secretive about financial things. As a result, I barely knew how to balance a checkbook before I got married. My husband's family talks a lot about finances and he has a much healthier view of money than I do/did. I want to raise our kids more like his family and talk about money in an educational way from a young age. I'm not sure how much detail we'd give about specific numbers right away, but when they are older? Sure.

I won't discuss how much money DH and I make with our kids. I grew up with very little money and was aware of it, and as a result, I felt poor. I don't think kids need to know how much or little money you have. You can teach your kids healthy money habits without telling your kids how much or little money you have. Mimicking others, maybe when they are older.

We wouldn't hide it if they asked at an appropriate age, but probably not going to divulge it up front.

Probably not?

No because I wouldn't want them sharing it with our friends.

I would tell my kids at 16 or so in the context of college tuition, budgeting, retirement and choosing a lucrative major (or not).

My parents shared with me at that age and explained why my dad's salary as a government employee wasn't the fortune it sounded like to 16 year old me. How my mom being a SAHM impacted their financial planning (with a positive spin). They also explained the savings plans they had for retirement would work with sending two kids to college. I really took it all to heart.

I think secrecy gives things undue power. People (generally) are secretive about their salary because they would either be embarrassed or worried it would make other people feel embarrassed. But I don't think that salary or wealth is a measure of your worth. Yes, it can be indicative of your level of education and how hard you've worked in life. But we obviously value some sectors of the economy more than others,'when often we shouldn't. So some people are underpaid through no fault of their own. I don't think it's necessarily anything to be embarrassed or proud of.

That being said, I would probably wait till middle school.

Not until they are older, because I'm sure it would sound like a ton of money to my kids and they wouldn't understand why we couldn't give them X or Y. A hundred bucks is a lot of money to a child. Let alone getting into 5 and 6 figures. And they'd blab to their friends for sure.

Once they're older, I want them to understand where a salary of X goes--I want them to know that we started out making A and that after 20 years, we now make B. We make this, and this is what we spend on groceries, the mortgage, bills, etc...I think that's important. There are so many expenses I don't think they'd realize there are!

My parents were incredibly secretive with us. Because they were very well off. Money is/was power to them. They still brag about spending X on their vacations in a sort of gross way. But i didn't really have a good grasp on money until I started to have my own salary and have my own bills. I feel like there has to be an in-between.

I wouldn't until they understand what it means to work and have debt. So maybe after college, ha! A middle-schooler or even a high school student would think our income is high, but it isn't when framed in the context of our debts.

Yes! I totally plan to be very open about finances. I just read an article about this that really cemented how I already felt. Basically, I think it's good for children to realize where your money goes and why--it's a good tool to help them realize financial responsibility.

On paper, it kind of looks like DH and I make a lot of money--but we could easily sit down with (older) children and show them how much we contribute to 401ks and RothIRAs and tell them why those are important (so they don't have to take care of us). Then we can show them how much we contribute to savings and college funds and explain the importance of that. Then we can show them our mortgage and bills, food expenses, general family expenses, savings for vacations for the whole family--and soon they will realize that after all those things are done, there's not much left!

I think it's a good tool to keep kids from being ungrateful or for requesting ridiculous things like a new iphone6 at the age of 12 before they would likely be able to take care of a $500 phone.

@Anagram: I totally agree. While I knew how much my parents made, I didn't know ANY of that other stuff. I grew up with such bad money management problems (to be fair my parents had their own money management issues), and it's taken quite a while to shift my mindset about finances.

Also because, my parents were very conservative financially and my dad always drove junker cars and was really tight with money, so I just always assumed we were on the poor side. When he got sick and I knew he was going to pass away, I worried for the whole 2 years how my mom and my little sister would survive financially. My mom never wanted to talk real financial details and I just assumed they would be destitute (since my dad was the major breadwinner).

When my dad actually passed, I finally got my mom to sit down and tell me the overall financial situation and I was blown away by how much money she would have--in cash savings, plus my dad's retirement accounts, plus an annuity from his company, plus her own retirement--and then I knew SS would kick in 5 years down the road.

All my worry for 2 years was completely unnecessary. Grr...why aren't parents more open with their kids? I just don't get it.

@Modern Daisy: And i kinda see where they were coming from--my dad retired in his 40's so they were comfortable beyond what I could fathom, but talking about investing money in CDs or interest rates and making their money grow for them, investment properties, all those other things could have been valuable....I vaguely knew they were important when I graduated, but I didn't really have a tangible grasp on it. Even just the basics of "this is what it costs to feed a family. We have more money, but we choose to save it for these reasons" would have been a valuable lesson. I just think there could have been some middle ground so that I knew what sort of bills to expect. I was so clueless and I, embarrassingly, struggled with what should have been a comfortable salary. What if I hadn't had such a good degree under my belt? I mean, people feed a family of 4 on that kind of money. And I don't want my kids to think that money is power or a control item over them, so I want to lay it out relatively factually when they're at an age to understand that we have these bills, why they're important, what my 401K is, why we put extra money into an IRA account....But even now, I'm the sole inheritor of their trust and the most I can get out of them is "Call my accountant when we die. He knows everything". I feel terribly unprepared for what will inevitably happen. I'm the kind of person who would send my kids instructions But again, we are talking adult conversations with "kids" who are basically adults at this point!

This is really interesting -- money is always such a weird topic. And reading the responses, I feel like people are looking at it from different interpretations of what "kids" means. I took it as just generally meaning my (future) children, not necessarily when they're small, though. Would I tell a five-year-old what I make? No, because it's not relevant or important to them. But I also doubt a five-year-old would ask. But yeah, high school-age children, I would definitely tell. I think it's good preparation for the real world to know, "You're interested in xx type of job -- here's the kind of lifestyle you would have," so in that context I don't see why I would be secretive about it.