Will there ever be a day when you wake up where you don't have to think about money? How to make it, how to spend it, how to save it, and yet it's not an important enough topic for the classroom? The lack of personal finance education that we have, particularly in a public school curriculum, is verging on criminal.
Kids tell me, I need to know this. I know that the world ahead is going to be complicated. and I'm not prepared. It's interesting that we teach students about business and how to handle money for businesses, but we don't teach them how to handle their own money first. It's one of the hottest topics in education right now.
It's one of the most vital. We've got to fix this, and we've got to fix this now. What's happening in our society is no longer a race issue, but a class issue.
The only way that we provide a gateway to financial freedom and financial stability is through financial literacy and financial education. My mom lives with me and she is, her family is from Barbados. My family comes from South Sudan.
We immigrated from Thailand. My family is from Bhutan. I'm definitely teaching my parents things about money.
In our culture, it's hard to talk about money. When my mom was in high school, she didn't have a class like this. I couldn't just ask my parents questions about like banking or finances because my parents hadn't gone through any of that. Since my family didn't talk much about money, I actually didn't know anything at all. I didn't even know investing was a thing.
I didn't even know financial literacy was a thing at all either. Winooski's claim to fame is we are the smallest and most diverse school district in Vermont. Students come from countries all over the world to our school and we are the only minority majority school in the state of Vermont. Our school is in a town that's under one square mile and we have under 800 students in the kindergarten through 12th grade. We focus so much on equity and making sure that every student has the same chance at college and every student has the same chance at a career, but we're not giving students the same chance when it comes to money.
So a lot of times students are coming into my class learning and then taking that information home and helping their families too. So that's one thing that students tell me over and over again is thank you now that I have this information I can explain it to my parents. What do you think students should know and what can they do? This class gives them hope and this class gives them the ability to make an impact on their families. I want to have a huge list for students to decide between.
Things that I learned through personal finance and entrepreneurship I actually use to help my parents with some of the financial questions that they have. I know some things that they don't and they have more experience than I do, so it's like a mutual learning thing where we just share information and knowledge like that. In personal finance I learned that you're really only supposed to use about 20% of what you can. just so your credit score stays good. But my mother was using about like 80, 90, so I had a whole conversation with her about how it's better to just be using a smaller amount just so we can build the credit.
I can think of so many stories as far as how it's made an impact on students'lives. So I think about some of my students who have gone to a credit union with their parent and helped them understand what they needed to be able to buy a house. So when students look at the cost of renting versus the cost of owning a home in class that really...
sets off some fireworks for the students and then they get excited and think, my family could have a home, this is exciting. And so they start researching and they make those connections in the community. Money is something you're always going to be using throughout your life, so it's important to learn about it while you're in high school instead of graduating out of college and having no idea. This is the kind of stuff that you're going to need in your life later on in the future. And you can teach your kids and then it goes on and on.
If you want kids who know how to not be in debt, What a credit score is, what kind of credit card options there are out there. If you want them to be more knowledgeable, safer with their money, as well as be better spenders, then personal finance is a must. You know, so we spend a lot of time in terms of focusing on the materialism to the point where it becomes almost like a cult where people are concerned about not keeping up with the Joneses, right, which at the same time therefore discourages savings.
Personal finance is a 21st century survival skill. There's no skill that's more practical. There's no class that really would be a greater investment in terms of the return that we would get in the future.
Kids making better decisions, kids managing their money well. In order to afford the down payment, how much will Jocelyn need to save for each of the next three years? A young lady was at the grocery store the other day and she was paying with her debit card and the cashier said, would you like cash back?
And the girl was like, yeah, who wouldn't want cash back, you know? She thought it was like a rebate or she thought it was something like she was the millionth customer and was getting some money rewarded when in reality she was draining her own checking account. Going into the real world, especially as a senior, and having to save for college and starting my own jobs and like realizing that like, wow you actually have to rely on money instead of like you know your parents money for your whole life. You don't want to leave college and then be in debt and sometimes that debt can fall you for the rest of your adult life.
They're all of a sudden realizing that they're faced with these massive numbers that they've never had to wrestle with before. It's an unbelievable wake-up call because they they are being thrust into making adult decisions with a adult sums of money and with adult consequences and yet they don't feel that they have been prepared. We are constantly being surrounded by things that are constantly telling us, okay, you have to buy this or you're not going to be cool if you don't own a certain model of a car, if you don't own a cell phone, if you don't have new Gucci slides.
After this class we talked a lot about like instant gratification and every time I'm about to like buy a coffee or like a t-shirt online, like I definitely think about like... The necessity of it or if it's just that I saw this ad come across my Instagram and I thought it was something cool. There's an awful lot at stake.
If we educate our consumers to think about their purchases, then they're not going to hit that magic one-click button on their Amazon. This is somewhat depicting the complete crazy attitude that we have for consumption placed next to the somewhat limited interest that we have in saving our money. My teachers created a curiosity in me. I see that curiosity in personal finance. I see them get excited.
I see that when we when we change directions in the course from maybe what the typical mainstream things that I'm needing to teach them to something more along the lines of personal finance, they spark up. They talk about it. They want to know more. They want to know how they can do it in their personal lives.
So much of our lives are centered around where we spend our money, how we get our money, where we save our money. This is really the only class that we're given that's this applicable to real life. If we can give them at least a foundation of an understanding of how to manage their money, how maybe to save, how to budget, how to sit on purchases, how not to be spontaneous, then I think ultimately that would be a huge gain for their future. Personal finance is something that I came into just from like making a lot of mistakes and so I learned it myself. and then decided to start teaching it back to other people because it's something that I think is missing a lot in like the educational space.
One of the things that I love about this is that the students, their backgrounds really are similar to mine in a lot of ways. My parents immigrated to New York City in like the 70s and late 70s, early 80s, and they didn't know anybody. Dad pretty much just worked like unforgiving jobs, worked his way all the way for a few years to bring my mom over and to bring the rest of the family.
So later when I got In the process of applying to college, my parents were like, you're going to have to talk to your teachers and try to figure it out because we literally just don't have any money to contribute to this. When I was in school, I had to buy my textbooks. I had to buy everything for my dorm room myself.
I had to, you know, my food, clothes, anything was coming out of my pocket. I had amassed $20,000 in credit card debt, and I put all of the money that I could every month for my paycheck directly towards that credit card debt. It took me about 18 months to pay it all off.
Hello everybody! Hi! My family was actually a big reason why I started nerding out around like money topics. Like I was reading all the personal finance books and like following all the blogs and listening to the podcast that all the financial experts had. And I was...
I was learning so much so quickly that I was like I want to I want to share it with everybody and especially like my family. So you vegetarian now too? Sort of. My parents slowly saw.
my interest in personal finance growing, it piqued their curiosity to learn about like how I handle my money. Like I'll start talking to my dad about how stocks work and he's all interested in that. And like he's never had anybody talk to him about the stock market in his entire life. Being a low-income Hispanic girl from Brooklyn, New York, you don't really often see that story told in the personal finance space. I felt like this is the perfect opportunity for me to disrupt this space and say, hey, there are other...
There are other faces, there are other voices. Hi, I'm Yanely, also known as MissBeHelpful. You wanna start investing in the stock market as young as you possibly can.
I post videos on my YouTube channel about money, but in a fresh way. I try to just make it sound like conversational like if I was at a cafe having a cup of tea with my girlfriend How would I explain to her that she should be contributing to her employer sponsored retirement plan without using all those like words? And people started asking me to teach what I was posting on videos on YouTube in person And so then I remember I went back to my alma mater to do a workshop for some of the seniors during senior week and that That was probably a turning point for me when I realized, because after the session was over, it was about an hour and a half long session, and I thought, oh goodness, 90 minutes of talking about this stuff, they're probably done. And at the end, they wanted to stay, and they all lined up to come shake my hand and ask me more questions and talk to me, and I want to take a lot more of my time to devote to this and teaching young people so that they don't make all those mistakes with credit cards that I made.
I want to do this all the time. Alright, so without further ado, let's go to the game. I'm just going to do my freshman year. I have the benefit of actually going backwards and putting in what I actually did do for choices.
But some weren't even existing. laptop computers didn't exist when I was a freshman in college folks. My favorite way to teach is my favorite way to learn, and that's through telling stories. And for me, when the story is true and you can put a name and a face with it, it just makes it more sticky.
kids seem to listen more, they seem to care more. I think Mr. Kupminy personally does a really good job teaching because he uses a lot of his personal stories and how he's lived his life to explain it to us, what he would have done differently, what he's done well, and I think that's very valuable to have in the classroom to see that real life example rather than just telling us the facts. He always promotes the Roth IRA and how that really, you should start saving now instead of later. I think that's really valuable. and not even spending the extra few dollars on something so you can put it towards something in the long run better.
I did put over $1,000 into a Roth IRA to start saving for retirement. I've learned how to calculate a mortgage. I've learned what ways credit card companies try to trap you. It really prepares you for real life.
The Finance and Investment Challenge Bowl is a great way to kind of hook kids into having a fun way to learn and show what they've learned in financial literacy and economics courses. The FICB or Finance and Investment Challenge Bowl goes back several years where a couple of my colleagues got together and said how can we give educators a hook to make financial education come alive. True or false, an unsecured loan typically involves... We came up with the good old-fashioned College Bowl kind of buzzers and quiz masters and scoreboards and competition with fabulous prizes too. This will be their first time experiencing a state tournament.
It is definitely a much more competitive environment than the regional. We're definitely the underdogs coming down there but we're gonna let them have it full bore. What area of Wisconsin is known for its production?
Good, excellent for ten points. I think it's an honor to be going from such a small town, Rylander's, I think it's 9,000 people, versus these other schools like Madison that have hundreds of thousands of people in it. The official score is 180 to Rylander and 145 to Kenosha. That means Rylander has won this round. Great job.
First round. They do have another team here today too that beat our other Rhinelander team so we can maybe pay them back. Great job first game. Thank you.
Oh no, so we're playing the other one. Yes, we're. Oh.
Guys, like, this is no bueno. We know. We're going to win fair and square, don't you worry. I'm a pessimist.
because of intellect but an optimist because of will which one is ryan lander team one your team one and your team two okay all right got it define microeconomics like personal economics as opposed to macroeconomics which deals with like government next question the tragedy the commons is a situation where something in 2019 some newly elected members of congress so one argument against this is the Laffer Curve. Guys, that is the end of the game, good job. Hunter, that was a good time, good job.
I'm proud as heck of you to represent our town, our school, the department. I feel the emotion that you feel watching you compete. Honest to God, I get nervous like for you, for me, I'm nervous as heck watching you play.
Smile. Students need to know that they need to be the one to focus on their planning for any financial need. A favorite comment of mine in class is no one will ever care more about your money than you will. So the more you can learn about taking care of it, the better off you are. We are about 20 minutes south of Sheridan High School.
This is the port of entry into Progreso, Mexico. We share this border like it's, you know, from a town to a town. It's very normal and common for our kids to go on the weekend.
And like they say, oh, yeah, I'm going to go to Mexico. Like it's, oh, I'm just going to go to the mall. Parents do know if you go to Sherryland, you are getting an A plus school. So that's what they want.
You know, I mean, everybody wants the best thing for their kids. So they will get, you know, like apartments and just live two different lives. They live, you know, like during the week in their house that allows them to go to Sherryland. And then in the house on the weekend, they'll go back with their family, like their significant family and extended family and all of that.
Sharon at high school is I'm gonna say high 90s Hispanic students sharing my personal stories with the girls in class of you know I've been on my own since you know 17 18 I've had to figure it out it's a lot of sharing my personal stories and helping them understand this may not be what your life looks like but it is my life, it is relevant, and our lives combined probably don't look like the next person over. So it's a lot of just about communication. It's a lot about sharing and listening to them. When I first started, I was a mess.
I didn't know how to. to save money. I would usually like start crying of how like worried I was of how I was gonna pay my bills and like I didn't really want to tell my parents because I feel like they would think I was irresponsible.
Until you actually step out and figure out how adults have to do all these things in order for them to pay for their house, pay for you know their taxes, pay for the rent and stuff like that it's it's a lot. If the cost per ounce is lower, you will get-I started taking the kids to our local grocery store and saying, okay, we're going to learn about budgeting, we're going to learn about nutrition, and then I'm going to throw you all chickens with your heads cut off and try to make a meal for a family of five. that's protein, a carb, all of that under $15. Each item in the store will have a product tag posted on the shelf below the item. And they're looking at me like, that's not possible.
So like we did this whole like menu thing where we like our budget was like a certain amount of money. I learned that that I can eat right, eat healthy, with like 30 bucks or something. If we're on a budget though, then we should just stick to the cheapest.
That's the best experience that my kids have had. And since then, and kind of seeing the light bulb moments go off in their heads of, it's possible, I can help my family with finances while we're eating better. I thought, okay, it's relevant, we need to talk about it. And then I kind of just went to my administration and said, I wanna do this class, let's try.
They said, okay, we'll give you one section. And one section is. grown into five, six, and it's gotten so big that we this year had to get another teacher part of our department so that we could keep Keep teaching dollars and cents in lifetime nutrition. So we went from zero to a good quarter of our school. Being in dollars and cents with Miss Lucero has really made an impact on my own view of money because I always thought of it as you know just a simple thing that you know comes and goes it's not necessarily a thing that is needed for everyday life besides what you have in your pocket. It was mostly like getting everything organized and where she helped me so I can see where I have to do my priorities of what I have to spend on.
Since we have this class I learned how to save my mom's money, how to save my own money, and yeah like it just helped a lot. This class really it's it's been a huge impact in my in my mom's life. I found something that I felt made.
The world a better place and I think through teaching about personal finance and nutrition and mental health and you know like all of the things that are under the umbrella of Family Consumer Science that that's my way of giving back. I think they can see my passion for it and I think they hear my stories through their their friends and they're like okay this is relevant you know like and it's important to us. I am very thankful and lucky that they believed in me enough to let me start this class. We are pretty much in the center of the state of Kentucky.
Elizabethtown is kind of referred to as Hub City because we're kind of the hub of Kentucky. I'm a business education teacher. The last few years all I've done is financial literacy.
But also I've coached a lot of different sports, basketball for the last 22 years since I started. Now if you remember back in 07, 08, 09 it was some rough. economic times.
I just started seeing an interest level in kids because I think they were seeing things at home that they had not witnessed before either. In 2008, I had a class, a personal finance class of about 20 students. I went to my administrators and said, you know, if we had enough students, could I teach another section of this next year? And they said, sure.
And we did have enough to sign up for a second class. So from 08, where we had 20 students, to last year where we had 150 students, I really had a realization that if we could duplicate what I was seeing in my classroom across the state, we could really make an impact. I didn't know if it could be done.
I did know in my heart that we had to try to get it done, that that was the right thing to do. I had two great rock star legislators. I couldn't ask for two better people. That core group of, I had Dennis Parrott who was a senator that was in my district and Representative Jim Duplassie.
The senator and I, although we're differing parties, we speak a lot and empowering our kids for financial literacy was something that we very much agreed on. We just had a good roundtable, several hour discussion about. You know, which path do we want to take?
But it's really good because we all learn from each other. So we work with the Department of Education. So I filed a bill that those kids would have to have a financial literacy course their junior, senior year.
But it got held up by another senator, and so I was not able to get it passed. So I went to Representative Dupacy and said, Jim, take this bill and run with it. You're in the majority party.
Run with it. You run into a lot of roadblocks as you're doing legislation. And in order to have successful legislation, you've got to get a lot of buy-in from it. from a lot of different groups. The Department of Education was involved, our education commissioner was involved, teachers were involved, lots of people were involved.
I knew once that I gave it to Representative Dupes to see if it would pass. I believe that this bill will have more impact on the future of the Commonwealth of Kentucky than most of the bills that we're going to have on this floor this year. It would pass the House of Representatives and then come to the Senate and pass, as it did.
This is not a political issue. It's not a controversial issue, it's a common sense issue. When you have somebody who can do like Alex did and show you the need and what we can do to change that, I want to be part of that.
And Alex and teachers like Alex can do that if they'll build relationships with their legislators. The key thing about the school is this is where we can reach every kid, everyone. And quite honestly, it's the only one.
You know, college's financial literacy is great, but not everyone's in college. Once they walked ...across our graduation stage, they're gone. You know, this is our opportunity right now.
For very little time, for really very little money, we can start to have an impact on one of the, to me, one of the biggest areas that we have failed in America, is this financial education, because it lays a foundation for these young people. At the end of the day, the kids of Kentucky. One. And it's because of what they did in our legislature.
Since 2013, every two years, we've been doing a report card that measures the public policy of every state with regard to what it requires in high school for students to do as a graduation requirement with regard to learning personal financial literacy. And when you look at the best of the best, there's only one state. That is better than any other state in the country, and it's Utah. One of the things that led to Utah to become an A-plus state, the only A-plus state in the nation, was back in the early 2000s, 2002, 2003, the economy was going well, but we had challenges. We were number one in the nation with bankruptcies, foreclosures were on the rise, a lot of people had credit card debt, and people just were not savvy with their money.
Economic downturn was coming. We knew that we needed to start doing some things now. A group of bankers, politicians, interested community members gathered together with education officials to talk about the state of financial literacy in our schools.
One of our state senators, Pat Jones, proposed this bill to make financial literacy a requirement for graduation. Although some students were getting some of this coursework, In CTE courses, we felt like all students should have access and be required to take financial literacy courses in high school. So that collective thought around financial literacy, coupled with a high bankruptcy rate at the time, propelled a legislature to pass a law that would look at financial literacy, and our Board of Education decided to make it a graduation requirement. Making that investment into their schools and really ensuring these students come out with it. the skills and knowledge really has a big impact, not just for that student, but I think it affects the entire state and the economy.
Financial literacy is the one that I think of any subject matter I've ever taught the students, this is the one that is the most life-altering. If I don't follow my budget and I buy a home that costs too much, the problem is then I can't vacation. Six years ago, I was approached by my principal and asked if I would be interested in teaching financial literacy. My husband and I had been married about 17, 18 years, and our finances were the worst.
We were in shambles. We were tens of thousands of dollars in debt. We had no idea how we were going to help our kids pay for college.
The first year teaching financial literacy, I would come home and just mention to my husband, I'd say, you know what we learned? We taught our students, high school kids, how to budget. And I said, what if, you know, what if we just tried this out?
And lo and behold, just figuring out where our money was going proved to be probably the most eye-opening thing. We, within two years, had that credit card debt paid off and we, our life, I can't even begin to describe how different life has become. We now have resources to help our kids pay for college.
We just go to bed and we sleep. We finally get to sleep at night. For me it was the best class I could have ever taught. We have teachers who are talking about, as they were entering into becoming a financial literacy teacher, they were learning and growing along with the students.
And that was a subsidiary benefit that we didn't anticipate. Really, this generation of teachers who were better financially prepared along with their students. My satisfaction in being a teacher 27 years in is beyond what I can comprehend. I love, absolutely.
I'm passionate about what I do and financial literacy was a new topic that brought so much renewed energy and happiness to what I teach. So if I can do it Anything to get another teacher excited and on board about teaching financial literacy, then I feel like that's a win, just a bigger win for me because everything about this subject changes lives, alters lives for the better. The City of School is located in the West Village of Manhattan.
It's an eclectic mix of artists, business people, and entrepreneurs. The reason why we're called City of School, because City of School, we... The city is our school, is our classroom.
Good afternoon. Hey, hey! So, one of the activities that we're going to do today is called Create a Mutual Fund, a company that you're going to be representing.
City High School is an alternative high school. that mixes both a traditional education and internship opportunities in areas that we students are interested in. A big part of what we do here is internships and students going out and earning credits. MJ Conn is a third-generation run fabrication and textile company.
I cut out fabric swatches and create swatch templates for some of like the biggest fashion brands in New York City. This feeds into personal finance education for me because I'm running my own brand. Having that knowledge and that background influences a lot of my financial decisions with my brand.
So you have to have some sort of financial literacy to make sure that your company doesn't go into the red. experience you're learning, learning by doing. Kids get a chance to really dive in so they get a richness of learning that which doesn't happen in a lot of traditional schools.
He taught me a lot about you know just financial pitfalls, making sure that you're staying on top of your finances, your bookkeeping, build a career set for yourself and then from those careers comes money and you have to learn how to manage that money so that you can live your life the way that you want. First of all, stand up. Find somebody that's got a company that might be similar to yours.
25? 21. Okay, so it lowered your... What about you guys?
Who did it raise? Most of our students don't have that kind of education, just like I didn't have it, and they're not getting it at home for the most part. The young mother who had a kid who was living in halfway homes, she had taken a checking and savings class that I had.
She was soaking up like a sponge, and she would save her little money, and then she came back six to nine months later. you know, excited that she was able to get a little room, it wasn't a big place, but a little room for her and her daughter to stay. And that's when I knew the power of this type of education and how it can impact students. I've taken three of Tony's classes.
classes, my whole idea of like responsibility in adulthood has completely changed. I always say everybody's trying to get in your pocket. It's your duty to guard it. If we could get this wave of personal finance that's building with the Tonys of the country, if we could build that to cover the whole country, imagine how much better off the next generation of young people would be.
In this two-year period from November 2017 to now, I have never seen so many states making positive movements. Something's happening right now. Wisconsin has been on the bandwagon. big time more and more school districts jumping on board to that number it's growing exponentially the wave of enthusiasm just the idea that I'm followed down the hall and kids stay after class because they want to know more about this this class gives them hope in this class gives them the ability to make an impact on their families You'll have certain kids that are just like, first time that they're ever having these conversations.
We're communicating about things that were once taboo. It's not something that should be admonished. It's not something that should be in secret.
Everybody has money and let's talk about it. I start to hear a lot. of comments of oh my gosh I love this.
I 100% think that all high school students should take this course because I don't I don't know how someone could be successful without knowing how to manage their money. With personal finance you take everything that happens in the real world. and you bring it into the classroom. These little skills right now that don't seem like they're so fundamental in the long run will really help you out and allow you to live your life the way that you want to live it. Everyone is going to deal with money in some way and everyone is going to need to know that information.
So the earlier you start, the better off you'll be. I would get comments from parents like, you know, this is the class I wish I'd had in high school. And I'm thinking, yeah, me too.
It should be mandatory that personal finance be taught in every high school simply because... That's the one thing that everyone that goes to school has in common, is you're going to have to learn how to manage your money. NextGen Personal Finance and the nationwide community of personal finance educators are committed to Mission 2030, a goal that by 2030, all high school students will take a one-semester personal finance course before they graduate.
Please visit. ngpf.org to lend your support and to bring personal finance education to the schools in your community. Find free resources and professional development workshops to get you started. Check out the advocacy section on the NGPF website for tools that you can use to make the case for personal finance education. The next generation is counting on you.