You might have gotten a quick-n-dirty email asking for help in voting for Moneythink online. But what’s this all about? Here’s where you’ll find out what’s really going on and learn how you can help us take our game to the next level.

I’m asking you for a low-effort, high-impact favor. Moneythink, the organization I co-founded to provide peer-mentorship and financial literacy for urban youth, was just selected as one of 15 finalists out of over 1400 applicants for the White House Champions of Change Campus Challenge. The five winners that get selected out of the 15 finalists will be recognized at the White House, featured on MTV, and will get a ton of other publicity as well.I’m committed to going full-time with Moneythink in June, and winning this competition would go a long way towards helping us garner resources to grow our programs and help more kids.

Here’s the catch: the winners are selected based on how many online votes they get. A few weeks ago, our incredible support base (you included!) helped us win the GOOD grant through similar means; now it’s time for the big leagues, and we need all the help we can get. I know you’re busy, but I also know you care…it would mean the world to me if you could help out by following these steps (takes under 5 minutes):

1. VOTE: Go here and cast all three of your votes for Moneythink! (takes <30 seconds)
2. POST: Go to Moneythink’s facebook page, like its most recent status, then share that status with your friends by clicking “share.” (takes <60 seconds)
3. TWEET: If you’re on twitter, click here to tweet about it and follow us! (takes <30 seconds)
4. JOIN & INVITE: “Join” our Facebook event and invite 1000 of your Facebook friends by clicking the “Invite Friends” button in the top right corner.
5. SHARE (highest impact): Think of five friends you think would care enough about you or this cause to do what you’re doing (vote, post on social media, then share with five friends), then send them personal messages asking them to help. I’ve supplied a template below that should make it easy. (takes <3 minutes if you use the template)
6. BONUS POINTS: If you have a little extra time or just really want to make this happen, you can: a) send the first three steps of this out to some email lists and groups you think might help amp the voting #’s, b) hit up more than five friends, and/or c) tweet/post daily.

I’m grateful for your guys’ help. Together we’ll ignite a generation, inspire humanity, and change the world.

Let’s do this,

Ted

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Use the below email script to set off the chain reaction!

SUBJECT LINE:

QUICK: Help Us Get to the White House – click, open, vote.

MESSAGE:

Please click this link and vote (3 times) for my friend’s organization to help us spread financial life skills and youth empowerment around the country.

If you like what you see, please ask your friends to do the same thing.

If you love what you see and want to help us truly evangelize and knock this out of the park, please take a look at this post on the Moneythink blog to find out how.

Thanks so much for your support,

___insert name here___

Ted Gonder, Moneythink co-founder and Executive Director

I had the privilege this month of traveling to New York and Washington DC to attend a few events, all of which were centered around the idea of restoring economic opportunity in America. At these events, I took copious notes (filling an entire Moleskine), asked a ton of questions, engaged in hundreds of energetic conversations, and tried to learn as much and meet as many people as I could. I was there representing Moneythink, trying to understand how we–our movement, our model, our vision–fit into the overall picture of what’s going on in policy, in business, and in the social sector. After catching my breath and reflecting on what I learned from all the people and organizations who have been in this game (the game of providing economic opportunity) far longer than Moneythink has, a few themes stick out to me as particularly important.

1. It’s not about poverty; it’s about opportunity. For a long time, the gravity of issues like urban neglect, an under-resourced education system, and financial illiteracy was foreign to me. Yes, I understood them on an intellectual level: I had read Malcolm X, Gandhi, and MLK; I was teaching weekly for Moneythink, building relationships with students and seeing the education problem first-hand; I recognized that the personal finance instruction I’d received in high school was essential to my daily living and worldview. Yet no matter how much of an impact we were making in the classroom or how amped I was on our mission, I still felt distanced from the issues Moneythink was addressing. Then I realized that I was thinking about the “problem” in terms of “poverty” rather than “opportunity.” Very few of us–certainly not me–have experienced poverty first-hand, but all of us are the product of opportunity. All of us have been given opportunities; those of us who are excited and grateful about where we are today are the ones who took those opportunities and made the most of them. Rather than tring to solve poverty, it’s important that we provide opportunities.

2. It’s not about ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, or even geography; it’s about humanity. For a long time, I thought about the “problem of poverty” in terms of ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, and geography. In analyzing economic inequality in our society, such correlations are impossible to avoid noticing. But to truly commit to providing opportunity, I needed to shed these analytical lenses of race, class, and zipcode, and see inequality for what it really is: a human issue. Analytical lenses make us more distanced from the issues we’re examining, and while they’re great for honing in on specific aspects of the problem, they distract and shut us off to the moral imperative we must feel if we wish to drive real change.

3. Out with the old, in with the new…but it’s not quite that simple. Young people are changing the world, from the Arab Spring to the Kairos Society, from  to Facebook to Al Qaeda. New innovations are coming by the boatload and taking the world by storm. Technologies exist today that we didn’t think would exist 10 years ago. Over half the stuff in Star Trek that we thought was total fantasy is now total reality. Some people have said we have a problem innovating, but I think the biggest problem is that our system still isn’t effective at adopting new innovations at scale. The old guard has a stake in protecting the status quo, even though it knows the status quo is decaying at a rapid pace. The big question I have is ‘how do we bring in new technologies and methods of education, energy, healthcare, clean water, etc. in a way that attracts the support of the resources of the old guard?’ My hypothesis is that we have to ride the wave of folks who already have a bit of support and are already showing their new methods to be effective, and pump as much support into those solutions as possible. My bias here is that Moneythink is one of those solutions: nobody else is mobilizing an army of college students nationwide to educate an entire generation within itself; for everyone involved, it’s a win-win. We need more win-win scenarios, and we need more people looking for opportunities to create these scenarios. Let’s aim for harmony over forceful, discordant adversarialism. Which brings me to my next point…

4. The need for dialogue across generational, national, and sectoral borders. A few days ago, I gave a brief talk in Washington DC at the US Chamber of Commerce, arguing that we need a dialogue between young people–the new wave–and the current power-holders–the old guard. Innovation is coming at such a rapid pace that the old guard will be overthrown if it doesn’t get out of the way and help guide the new wave, and the new wave will crash recklessly into avoidable barriers and fall helplessly into avoidable pitfalls if it’s not open to listening to the wisdom and learning from the mistakes of the old guard.

This generational dialogue isn’t the only one that needs to happen, though. The world’s becoming smaller and flatter by the second, meaning that communication and transportation are faster and easier than ever. This is a double-edged sword which must be wielded with great care: on the one hand, we can maintain global networks of friends, travel and experience culture, and build a greater appreciation and tolerance for diversity all around the world; on the other hand, our dependence on technology as it’s advanced makes it easier than ever for global technology systems to crash our lives in an instant and for nuclear war to break out sponateously in a matter of moments. The sword must be wielded wisely. Activities that promote dialogue across national borders should be supported. Programs like Start-Up Chilethat encourage global entrepreneurship networks and ecosystems are one of the best ways to bolster such citizen diplomacy through economic ties.

Finally, sectors need to work together. One of the biggest pain-points expressed at the events I attended this month was the rampant “silo-ing” of sectors. People aren’t talking with each other, and as a result, have no idea of the resources they could share among themselves to, again, create win-win situations. The private, public, and social sectors need to focus more on Creating Shared Value and less on PR stunts.

5. The time for change is now. It always has been, but this time it’s different. Let’s stop kidding ourselves. This century is going to suck for a lot of people unless we do something about it. The time for change has always been “now”…every major social movement has been fueled by a sense of urgent optimism. But never before have we had the scientifically predictive abilities to foresee the massive devastation we foresee now; never before have we had the technologies to solve so many previously-thought-unsolvable challenges. Let’s do whatever it takes to activate the latent potential of young people today. I say we start with education. For us at Moneythink, financial education is a key part of this equation.

Going into the Thanksgiving holiday, I have  a lot to be grateful for. You probably do, too. If you want to get really philosophical, we all do. Even those suffering from a lack of economic opportunity. But some of us will have nice, big dinners this Thursday, and millions others will go to bed hungry, just like they will tonight, and the night before, and two nights ago…

Be grateful. Celebrate. But think a bit about whether your kids will have as much to be grateful for as you. And then your grandkids. And their kids. If we don’t start hammering away at the greatest challenges of our time soon, it may be too late. So open a dialogue. Start a conversation. Take a stand.

Photo Credit: Huffington Post

With holidays on the horizon, financial literacy is probably the last thing your mind. And hey, we don’t blame you! When all your friends and relatives can talk about is their Christmas vacation and the ten pound turkey sitting in the oven, it’s easy to get distracted. To help you stay in the holiday spirit while not letting your brain turn into mush, we scavenged the Internet for a couple of quick and fun financial literacy quizzes. Go ahead and take them — they’re all quite short, and the results might surprise you!

MarketWatch Money Quiz
This finance quiz is hosted by the website MarketWatch, but it’s based on a scientific study coauthored by professors from Texas Tech University and University of Missouri at Columbia. The study made two disturbing conclusions. First, when it comes to personal finance, Americans have quite a ways to go. The average score on this quiz is just 50 percent, a solid F. Second, contrary to what you might expect, you don’t get wiser about finances as you get older, you get worse! Although scores improve somewhat until respondents are in their late 40s, they begin to plummet dramatically in old age. Quiz takers in their 80s averaged just 30 percent correct. Given that senior citizens control half the wealth in this country, and have to make complex financial decisions about retirement, medical expenses and the like, this is quite a worrisome finding.

JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy Survey (from Bankrate.com)
Give yourself a taste of the biggest finance quiz around. Every other year, more than 5,000 high school seniors across the country take part in the Jumpstart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. It gives a good picture of the financial savvy of America’s youth as they prepare to strike out as adults. Unfortunately, the picture isn’t pretty. In 2006, the year the questions in this mini quiz come from, the average score was just 52.4 percent, a small improvement from the 2004 survey. A neat thing about the quiz is that it not only gives you the answers at the end, but also what percent of the test takers selected each option. It may worry you, for instance, to hear that more than half the test takers think their parents’ health insurance covers them indefinitely as long as they live at home or remain unmarried. We hope the scores will continue to improve in the coming years.

Jump$tart.org Reality Check
Our last finance quiz isn’t, strictly speaking, a quiz at all. This one is from the folks at Jumpstart.org, the website of the people responsible for the survey above. They want you to test yourself on the practicality of your financial plans by giving you a “reality check.” All you have to do is plug in some basic data about your life (or perhaps, if you want to plan ahead, the life you want to be living in the future). For instance, do you live with mom and dad or a roommate? Do you drive a new car and eat out every night or take the bus and cook your own meals? How much would you like to save per month, and how much has to go to your education? The calculator then does a great job of showing you how much your lifestyle costs in practical terms; how much you’ll need to earn each week, and what kinds of jobs pay that salary. It also gives a quick sketch of the difference in pay based on education level, which might surprise you. The average professional degree holder, for instance, makes 4-5 times the minimum wage.

Did you takes any of the quizzes? Did you find other good places to test your financial knowledge? Share your experience in the comments!

To get a better understanding of this philosophy, we encourage you to watch the short video below, in which Moneythink mentors Shashin Chokshi and Vincent Yu talk about their experiences in classrooms on the Chicago South Side and how these experiences have changed the way that they think about education, urban poverty, and the transformative power of mentorship.

Within the past few years, we’ve seen an explosion in the proliferation of financial literacy programs across the nation. From the 13 financial badges that Girl Scouts recently began awarding to its members to the Capitol One/Junior Achivement Finance Park program, it seems like everyone is trying to get a piece of the proverbial financial literacy pie. People do things for different reasons, however, and as private institutions, non-profits, and local, state, and federal governments all launch their own independent campaigns, we could not help but wonder who is actually offering great advice and who’s just trying to sell books. We decided to review all of the major ongoing financial literacy programs around the nation and pick out the ones we believe hold the most promise.

Money Smart

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is best known as the government agency that insures bank accounts for up to $250,000. What you may not know is that since 2001 the FDIC has reached out to more than 2.5 million people with its very own financial literacy program. This “national financial education curriculum,” as they style it, is available in four different formats:

1. A curriculum that instructors can use in individual, small group or classroom settings for adults. The instructors’ guide, PowerPoint slides and a take home guide for participants are available in English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Hmong, along with a format for the visually impaired.
2. A parallel curriculum for classes for young adults.
3. A self-paced online program for people 13 and up, in English and Spanish.
4. Podcasts for financial learning on the go.

The wealth of material, plus the fact that it is all 100% FREE, makes this a wonderful starting point not just for those who want to learn more, but also for people interested in starting their own financial literacy program!

360 Degrees of Financial Literacy

This sleek website is courtesy of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. There’s lot of good information about topics like credit and budgeting, as one would expect from any solid financial literacy program. Where this site really shines, however, is in its clever organizational scheme. AICPA has identified ten different groups with distinct financial needs, from teens to retirees to military members and small business owners. Each group has its own page, with articles and tools specially tailored to it. There are also interactive polls and discussion boards where all users can ask questions and get feedback. Finally, there’s an almost dauntingly huge list of calculators for different financial planning situations that could really come in handy the next time you’re taking stock of your budget and investments.
BONUS: Remember those creepy “Feed the Pig” PSAs from a couple years ago reminding you to save your money? That campaign was also done by the American Institute of CPAs. Follow the link to it at the bottom of the page for more money saving tips.

Private Bank Programs

One trend that we find intriguing is the growing number of banks launching their own financial literacy programs. Wells Fargo’s Hands On Banking provides free online courses along with curricula that teachers can integrate into their classrooms. ING has partnered with several organizations that run financial literacy programs and has also launched a program that teaches young girls how to build a diversified portfolio. When they graduate from the program, they get to keep the profit they made in the form of college scholarships. What a wonderful incentive! Many other financial institutions run similar literacy programs. We’d like to see even more of them take on this important task, and for the companies already doing so to expand and better publicize their offerings. If every bank account came with a crash-course financial literacy program we’d all be much better off.

Are there any especially successful financial literacy programs that you think we missed? Let us know in the comments!

It’s no secret. Study after study has shown that when it comes to financial literacy, there is significant room for improvement. The 2011 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey found that two in five adults carry a month-to-month credit card balance, and more than half the respondents surveyed reported that they do not have a budget and don’t track their expenditures. A 2010 Capitol One survey of graduating high school seniors also found that “45% are unsure or unprepared to manage their own banking and personal finances.”

We at Moneythink strongly believe that the most effective way to change this sorry state of affairs is through comprehensive financial literacy education in schools. Giving students the tools to make prudent decisions about their personal finances has the potential to change their lives. Case in point: one of our students was able to save enough money to help his parents keep the heat on during the winter! Unarguably, we would be better off as a society if every citizen graduated primary school with a solid understanding of the principles of saving, budgeting, and long-term planning.

But no one is perfect. Not everyone is going to be the A+ student in their financial literacy class (if they’re lucky enough to have one). Not every teacher is going to convey the information in a way that sticks. Those high school lessons on compound interest might fade by college. Furthermore, questions may arise later in life that will be beyond the scope of what one learned in school. Everyone, regardless of the extent of their financial literacy education, will need help now and then. Of course, the best help is probably having a long-term relationship with a trustworthy and well-informed financial advisor. As things stand now, however, not everyone is lucky enough to have an advisor on-call 24/7.

There’s a lot of free financial advice floating around the Internet. Some of it is not up to snuff. The good stuff is scattered around a variety of websites from independent organizations and government agencies. It’s hard to know who to turn to, and figuring it all out is undoubtedly time-consuming.

The UK recently launched a creative solution to this problem. The Money Advice Service is a financial advice program that can be accessed online, over the phone or even via a face-to-face meeting. Rather than reading a text on the net, you talk to a real person who can answer your specific questions. The service is free to use, funded through a levy on the British financial services industry, and the people staffing it are not selling anything. Their only aim is to help consumers make better decisions.

Americans benefit from a wide variety of free, professional advice services, ranging from those with missions as serious as the National Suicide Prevention Hotline to as relatively trivial as Butterball’s holiday season Turkey Talk-Line. Surely having people make sound financial choices is something our entire society can recognize as even more important than a properly cooked Thanksgiving fowl. Experimenting with something like the Money Advice Service in the United States would probably cost little, but might avert financial disaster for thousands. Let’s try it! We think the phones would start ringing off the hook.

Would you use a financial literacy hotline? Do you think it’d be worth the cost? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Our first financial literacy video makes us wish we had all been as lucky as the kids of the Secret Millionaires Club, who spend their days getting life lessons and business advice from the folksy billionaire Warren Buffett (who voices himself!). In each episode, this team of plucky 14 year-olds learns something new about finance and personal ethics; in this one, they discover the importance of customer service for running a successful business. They’re a bit hokey, but charmingly cute, and the Oracle of Omaha has high hopes that his series will kick-start a much-needed dialogue between kids, parents, and teachers about the importance of taking proper care of your piggy bank.

We could have picked any of the Khan Academy videos on finance, economics or the financial crisis to link to here-this is just the first of dozens. From the basics of interest to the complex causes of the credit crunch, this incredible website (which also hosts videos on a wide variety of other subjects) has got you covered. They all showcase the most important characteristic of an effective financial literacy video: simplicity. Everything is explained in plain English and written out neatly on the screen, leaving you wondering why you ever thought this stuff was hard.

And finally…

Anyone who was a middle schooler in the last 10 years might have fond memories of Tim and Moby, the whip-smart teenager and deadpan robot who star in BrainPOP’s videos. Here, the dynamic duo reminds us of the importance of making a budget and sticking to it. There’s all sorts of fun and helpful associated content, including a fill-in-the-blank budget, a quiz about the video and accompanying budgeting history and trivia to the likes of why the production of the 90s megaflop “Waterworld” should not be taken as a financial role model.

Now it’s your turn! Any financial literacy videos that you think are particularly useful / effective? Let us know in the comments!

How do you plan for this potentially savings-draining event?  Almost nowhere are our younger generations of Americans taught to think about or prepare for this crippling issue–not in high schools, on college campuses, or in the family household.  Even older Americans now are suffering from the lack of education and planning necessary to cope with long-term health care expenditures.  There is a clear gap in education here that is only widening with the economic downturn.

Savings run out quickly, and so does hope.  Even financial education has been slow in confronting this issue of long-term health costs as factors in individual retirement plans for most Americans. Financial planner Bradford Winton, of Legacy Solutions, explains “Long-term care is the blow many retirees are unprepared for” but is one of the main factors he vehemently emphasizes in his retirement planning sessions.

Considering nursing homes cost somewhere around $90,000 a year and Medicaid doesn’t intervene until an individual’s resources fall below $2,000—long-term health costs need to be a priority subject for educators.  But they aren’t.

So how does Financial Education intervene?  With educators reaching out to younger Americans and explaining to them simple steps they can take to plan for a safe and healthy retirement.  This includes:

As a result of this lecture format, boredom interrupts students’ learning.  This boredom erects a barrier between the lesson and its impact.  Students are unable to wholly connect the lesson taught–whether that lesson be the technical definition of an entrepreneur, the benefits and disadvantages of credit, or other abstract ideas–to their lives.  Words on a whiteboard mean nothing without inspiration and personal connection.

We need a new method of teaching.  One that breaks down the barriers between giving a lecture and creating an inspired discussion.  One that breaks through boredom and irrelevance.  Moneythink understands that our nation’s youth want lessons that relate to their everyday lives–lessons that makes sense to them.

This means teaching students through case-studies exploring how their role-models–like Tyra Banks, J.K Rolling,  Michael Jordan, and Oprah Winfrey–approach their finances, how they manage and accumulate their wealth.  Students’ eyes widen and their ears perk up.  Students aspire to become “like Mike,” to become the next Steve Jobs, to own their own television station like Oprah–and Moneythink’s mission is to kindle that inspiration and make it stronger.

In the classroom, mentors–not teachers–should engage students through pop-culture and their personal ambitions, because that’s what most interests them.  It’s not about the student becoming amenable to the lesson, but about the lesson becoming amenable to the student.  Financial education mentors should call upon idols like Steve Jobs and introduce four attributes essential to the Entrepreneur: motivation, non-comformity, leadership, and innovation.  Then proceed to explain how Jobs, or Tyra, exemplified and followed them all through incremental decisions.  Steve Jobs from his idea of the iPod, to his  eventual ascendancy to CEO of Apple, one of the most successful companies in the world.  To Tyra, from her modeling career up until her national television series, the “Tyra Banks Show.”

All this while the mentor doesn’t just talk to the students, but has a discussion about their day, learning more about their lives, and understanding them as individuals to better serve their intellectual needs.  A mentor is then not just a teacher, but an individual who becomes a part of the students’ lives.

This is what engages students.  Inspiration.  Breaking down the complicated and abstract into the concrete and tangible; breaking down the barrier between the role-model and the student, helping students believe that, through a series of easy action steps and strategies, they can in fact one day become “like Mike.”

Learn more about our approach to financial literacy and breaking down barriers between the student and success.  http://www.moneythink.org/entrepreneurship.pdf ]]> http://moneythink.org/blog/2011/10/23/why-financial-literacy-campaigns-fail-a-case-for-mentor-based-approach/feed/ 0 http://moneythink.org/blog/2011/10/23/why-financial-literacy-campaigns-fail-a-case-for-mentor-based-approach/