SAN FRANCISCO - Venture capitalists have been busy investing in personal-finance Web start-ups, attempting to tap into a new generation of consumers who have never balanced a checkbook and increasingly view online money management as they would any other kind of Web service.

A theater group teaches the fundamentals of money management to students. One key lesson: Save early. About 200 seventh- and eighth-graders are shushed into a vast auditorium and told to settle down, sit up straight and listen. They are being given an opportunity, Barbara Chanaiwa, the principal of Charles R. Drew Middle School in South Los Angeles, tells them. One false move and they'll be pulled out of the auditorium and be back in class in a heartbeat.