April 13, 2023

When you’re young, it’s easy to be carefree and not too concerned about the future. This is a concept that I know all too well. At 13, I started babysitting to earn money and my father would take half my earnings and put it into a savings account. I remember being so angry! I “earned” it, so shouldn’t I be in charge of how I spend it? It wasn’t until I was 17 and I went to buy my first car that I understood the lesson my father was trying to teach me. It felt so good to buy my used, old Nissan Sentra with the money I'd earned the past four years. Then came the lesson in paying car insurance each month. If it wasn’t paid, my car was parked in the driveway, and I was back on the bus to and from school. Much to my teenage self’s dismay, I was lucky enough to be taught the basics of financial literacy. Economic education, as early as possible, can help set children up for success later in life!

Charge It

Did you know that 38% of U.S. households have an average of $16,048 of credit card debt? It makes sense, considering I was offered my first credit card in college, so I jumped at the chance to charge a spring break trip to go skiing. I’m pretty sure it took me the remaining two years of college to pay off that one trip. Financial literacy is defined as the ability to use knowledge and skills to manage one’s financial resources effectively for lifetime financial security. I may have known how to earn and spend, but the other side of financial literacy — like protecting finances, saving, and investing — was foreign to me.

Steps to Financial Freedom

When planning, use the Financial Literacy Implementation Checklist to begin documenting how you’ll develop financial literacy programming for your students, families, and adult participants. It will help you focus on the areas needed to make the experience successful. Additionally, the Adult Financial Literacy Needs Survey is a great tool to assist you in collecting data. After you complete the needs survey, consider these three questions:

• What do we know about the financial education activities or programs that local schools offer?
• Do we currently use any activities or engage with partners (e.g., financial experts) that might align with financial literacy? 
• What knowledge and skills do current staff, advisory boards, program team, and partners have that may be useful?

Coaching Staff on Financial Education

We can’t assume our staff is educated on financial literacy. The Coaching My Staff section of Y4Y’s course on Financial Literacy can assist you in preparing your staff to implement a high-quality financial literacy program and provide them with tips and tools that will help them tackle tough subjects.

Show Me the Money!

There are many fun and exciting ways to teach financial literacy. You can increase student learning and retention even further by incorporating engaging learning strategies. Use the Y4Y tool Learning Methods At-A-Glance to select which learning style might be a good fit for your program and activities. When planning and implementing your program, make sure to check out the program schedules based on the grade level(s) of your out-of-school time program. See Financial Literacy Elementary School Program Schedule, Financial Literacy Middle School Program, and Financial Literacy High School Program Schedule.

A Lesson Learned

Fast forward from my childhood and college years to the present: I never truly understood the importance of introducing financial literacy concepts at a young age until my children would ask for something. We’d talk about needs and wants but in their minds, I could just swipe my credit card or go to an ATM and the money would magically appear. Gone are the days of putting chore money in a piggy bank. To keep up with the electronic world they are living in, I ordered a debit card for each of them. They can see when their chore money is deposited on their card. Just like my father did for me, I deposit half of it into a spending account and the rest into their savings account. They are learning to spend wisely, set savings goals, and invest for their future.

Many of your students might think, “Why not just live in the present and worry about the future later?” However, one of the best gifts we can give them is to help them improve their financial knowledge today so they can build the foundation for an amazing financial future.