Financial Literacy
We learn so many things in school: Science, Mathematics, History, Grammar and Foreign Language. The idea was for schools to offer the kind of subject matter that would help us succeed in our adult lives. Unfortunately, one of the basic things that we all need to know and yet had few lessons in is Financial Literacy.
At one time, I guess educators thought the topic too simple to address. “You get paid, pay your bills and then save money if you have any left over at the end of the week.” Investments, trusts and mutual funds were the concern of the very wealthy. If we were lucky enough to work for a big company, we could depend on a pension to see us through retirement and insurance paid the funeral costs.
But with today’s complex society, understanding how to manage money and meet the financial demands of a mortgage, college education, maintain two cars and save a little towards the 401K requires much more finesse and “Financial Savvy”. It’s not just about the very wealthy anymore, but about the average worker who strives to make a better life for his/her family and future generations.
We live at a time when the easy availability of credit has allowed the average individual to live way beyond his/her means. While this has driven our economy to produce goods and services that produced economic prosperity along with a high standard of living, the price we paid has been increasing debt, record foreclosures and a fall in home prices and collapse in the financial markets. Now more than ever, we need to understand how to manage our spending, saving and investing to ensure that we all can find some measure of financial security for ourselves and family. Financial Literacy is needed for everyone. We are all consumers, whether we are children insisting their parents buy them the latest video game or toy, teens who frequent the mall purchasing expensive electronics and designer wear, college students struggling to pay for college tuition or adults juggling the bills along with managing an expensive lifestyle, we all need to know as much as we can about how to get the most out of the money we have.
In this section, you’ll find tips and articles for all ages. We have also included resources for you to use. We have included downloadable games, presentations, calculators and tools to use whether you are a parent looking for ideas or a teacher introducing the topic to your class. We hope you will find the material helpful and we welcome your suggestions for additional articles you’d like to see.