I was terrible with money. My parents are too. Luckily my husband isn’t.
What set me up was when I needed a car (my $1500 clunker broke in middle of the highway) instead of my parents giving me money outright, they paid for the (used) car from their HELOC and essentially set up a car loan at the bank of mom. I paid them every month (scheduled for 5 years, with interest). When I was in a place where my income had increased and my partner could take on more living expenses, I did 2 things:
1. Take some money I was making and auto-saving it every paycheck in an (what was then) ING account.
2. The debt snowball that meant I doubled my car payment to the parents to pay it off early (alas, no savings on interest) and then rolled that money into settling outstanding debts, and then into savings.
If my parents had given me the money outright, I would have blown it. Maybe because we never were rich enough to give (really? $18k/year, $100k down payment?) gifts like that I learned how this works the hard way.
Not sure how to replicate that.