He has a fabulous academic background, a Miami Herald Silver Knight award for mathematics, and he's starting at Harvard.

But this Miami teen has plenty to learn, both about Massachusetts winters and living on his own, far from home.

''I have no clue what a long winter jacket costs,'' Matthew Winston says.

He's never paid a bill, either. Or created a budget. Or had to make do, on a student-sized budget that by semester's end might be pretty tight. How many nights in a row can that pizza last?

A Miami financial planner, who typically spends her days helping clients position their investments or plan their estates, felt that families have a special need this time of year. So she developed a way to teach teenagers how to handle their financial responsibilities.

''It's a rite of passage. It's time,'' insists Kathleen Day, who heads The Enrichment Group. ``Once they go off to college, they're adults.''

The Enrichment Group offers a service called life planning, in which non-financial issues and services, such as family counseling with a professional social worker, are intertwined with the core business of certified financial planners advising clients on how to handle their money.

The firm operates on a fee basis, charging clients up to 1 percent of assets under management per year for its services. The teens-and-money sessions are part of its overall package for families who need them.

The Herald listened in on two of Day's sessions, in which she takes the whole family through the process of making a financial plan for the departing student or a high school senior.

Day's message during these two sessions was simple. To the teens, Day said it might feel strange to be responsible for paying your own way, but you can do it. To parents, she said to let go of the purse strings, and watch the kids grow.

One session was with Winston, 18, and his parents. The other was with Miami Killian Senior High senior Craig Rosenkranz, 17, and his parents.

Rosenkranz had a summer job as a camp counselor at Coral Reef Park. He plans to find a part-time position as soon as he gets settled at school.

''What do you do with your money?'' Day asked him.

''I have a girlfriend,'' Rosenkranz said, without a trace of humor.

``Lately, we've been going to a lot of Marlins games. Or we go out with friends.''

Addressing his parents, Day asked Neil and Babs Rosenkranz if they buy Craig clothing whenever he wants. Their answer was yes.

Her suggestion: The parents should decide on a clothing allowance, then turn the money over to Craig. They should not dole it out each time he goes shopping.

''The idea is to let him decide how to use it,'' Day said.

And, if he uses it wisely, he gets to keep any unspent money.

''Craig is no clothes horse,'' his dad said.

''Some people go out and buy $200 tennis shoes. When you do that, you make a choice to spend the money that way,'' Day said. ``If he chooses not to spend a lot of money on clothes, he should be rewarded for that.''

Rosenkranz earns enough money for entertainment expenses, and he pays for gas for the 1996 Olds 88 that he bought with his parents' help.

For other teens, Day would have also proposed an entertainment allowance.

''We don't call it a budget. It's more like a spending plan,'' Day said.

She urged Craig to open a checking account in December when he turns 18 and learn how to handle it by using Quickbooks.

Credit-card offers will start arriving then, too. Day suggested Craig pick one and learn about that, too, while he's still under the watchful eyes of his parents.

Matt Winston has a considerably bigger budget than Craig because he's at college. His parents, Gary and Denise, figure they'll be handing him $2,500 a year to make it through school in Cambridge.

With Day and his parents, he was working his way through a list of decisions, such as whether his parents want to pick up the tab for laundry service and whether he should rent a small refrigerator for his dorm room.

Day made the point that while it doesn't really matter which choices the family makes, in the future there will be many more things Matt will have to learn to pay for.

''This year, you don't have an apartment or an electric bill,'' she said. ``But you will. So, are you going to have a cellphone?''

''That's a good question,'' said mom Denise.

''Because if you do, you'll have a cellphone bill,'' Day said. ``And do you know which cellphone plan you want? Have you ever done a phone plan, picking whether you want roaming or no roaming nationwide, or how many minutes you might need and whether you use them more at night or on weekends?''

''This is so much more than I ever had to do,'' Matt's father Gary said.

One of the most important things he'll have to learn, Day said, is what she calls the credit-card game.

''You can win or you can lose. The game is, you try to get the most points you can -- frequent-flyer miles or if the card gives you money back or some [other] reward. The game is, you never keep a balance, but you keep getting money or rewards from the card,'' she explained.

Never running a balance means paying off the charges in full every month. How can the parents be sure that Matt is doing that?

Day recommends having the monthly statements sent to the parents' home. They can then forward the statements to the student, who has to pay them.

The reason? Day's idea is to set up a system in which teenagers have bill-paying responsibility while parents still maintain some control.

She tells parents to not open the monthly bills regulalrly. But every once in a while, Day says, they should check to see what's inside.

If the parents discover that the teenager has broken the rule to never run a balance, then they have to discuss that.

''The people I wind up counseling that are in the deepest [debt] hole started while they were in college,'' she said.

What's more, ''You should have all the money you need to do the stuff you want to do,'' with the cash that your parents have allowed you.

The budget discussions might be slow to hash out wants from needs. And they aren't final.

''The idea is we come up with a budget for you for the first semester,'' Day said. 'At the end of the first semester, your job is to come back and negotiate that budget if it wasn't enough. You need to justify that by saying, `This is where I spent it, and this is where I didn't have enough.' ''

The hard moments for a parent are when the student calls home and asks for more money.

Day's goal is to avoid that. She remembers her own feelings back when her now-adult daughter called home from a faraway city, running out of money and unemployed. Day said she told her she'd have to find a job.

''And then I just died,'' Day said. ``It was the hardest thing to do. My kids are good kids, smart and wonderful kids, and I didn't want to just dump her on her own.''

To parents like the Winstons and the Rosenkranzes, her goal is to make sure that call does not come.

''What I care about is [the parents] don't make decisions and don't pay his bills and he doesn't call home and say he needs money. Those are not good calls to get,'' she said.

``The good calls are when he says he had a great day today and he wants to tell you about it.''