Season 3, Episode 8: What should teens know about finance?

“Don’t do what I did” and other essential lessons for the adolescents in our lives

Most of us who are only learning about finance and investing as grown ups have one very loud question in our minds:

Why don’t they teach this stuff in high school???

We had to learn about dangling participles and square dancing but not how to construct a budget or what’s being deducted from our dishwashing paychecks and why?

To answer these questions and more, we invited an expert on what teens should know about finance and investing, and when they should know it. Jacqueline Collins, a Massachusetts-based high school business and finance teacher (the 2021 National Business Teacher of the Year, in fact!), told us about how to meet kids where they are, how to freak them our with our health insurance claims, and why Robin Hood and other games might teach all the wrong lessons.

Jackie takes us through a semester in the life of one of her students and answers the question: What is the one thing all teens should know about finance before leaving the house? (Edge of your seat?? Listen!)

Last thing - even if you don’t have a teen in your life, you might learn something new. Do you know what a neobank is? Neither did we!!

I’ll give you a hint: you probably use one without knowing what it is and might be trusting it a little too much. Get informed!

Teen financial literacy resources, thanks to Jackie:

- extGen Personal Finance (NGPF) Live Dashboard: https://www.ngpf.org/live-us-dashboard/

- NGPF Arcade: https://www.ngpf.org/arcade/

- Build Your Stax is in the arcade!

- If you don't have a class in school, you could try a full-service program like Your Money Vehicle (https://yourmoneyvehicle.com/) *no relation to Jedidiah Collins

Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 3 on our Ask Us page!

We have the social medias!! Here’s our Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn.

This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

Transcripts for Season 3, Episode 8: What should teens know about finance?

Caitlin [00:00:07] Welcome to Women on the verge of a Financial Breakthrough, a podcast where we're figuring out finance, one dumb question at a time. I'm the dummy. Caitlin Meredith, a coach and mediator based in the Bay area.

Sara [00:00:20] And I'm Sara Glakas. I'm an investor, advisor and founder of Blackburn Financial and the Austin Women's Investing Group, which can be found on Meetup and Facebook.

Caitlin [00:00:30] Before we start, do you know a woman who might be on the verge of a financial breakthrough? Will you text her a link to our show and maybe two other friends while you're at it? Also, if you can, please leave us a review. This helps other women on the verge find us, and we read all of them and they make us happy. Cry like this one from a listener who said, I wish I'd heard this information 30 years ago. This should be required listening for high school graduates. It's relatable, accessible, and applicable regardless of where you are in your financial journey. Oh, that is just such high praise. Thank you so much and so relevant, because today we're interviewing a woman who actually teaches high school students about financial literacy. So we'll learn about all the stuff we should have learned when we were in high school. Thank you so much, and thanks to all of our listener. Now let's get started.

Caitlin [00:01:28] Okay, so today we are we have a new guest to our podcast to talk about what kind of financial literacy we should teach to kiddos, I guess especially teens, but we'll figure that out. So, Jackie, do you want to tell our listeners who you are? You don't have to say why we invited you, but like that, you have some, like, credibility in this. You weren't just like a mom I saw at the grocery store. You do have credentials, and I don't want to mess them up. So, Jackie, tell us who you are.

Jackie [00:02:04] I am Jackie, I am a high school business teacher in Massachusetts. I have been teaching all things business, financial literacy, since, well, for the last 18 years. Before that, I was a financial software consultant. So I am a career changer into education. But I've always loved everything to do with money. All sorts of financial things. Even even growing up, I was I had myself on the envelope system before I even knew what the envelope system was. So I feel like I had it in my blood all along, and now I get to teach it to my students. So I love it. But for, you know, for the credentialing part, let's.

Caitlin [00:02:46] Get official here, blah blah, blah.

Jackie [00:02:49] For the credentialing part, I was the 2021 National Business Teacher of the year.

Caitlin [00:02:55] Yeah, yeah.

Jackie [00:02:58] I am a national board certified teacher in career technical education, and my concentration area is business marketing and financial services. And I have done all sorts of work, for different organizations over the years. I have been a fellow with Next Gen Personal Finance. I have been a program champion with Discovery Education, working with them for their partnership programs on everything related to economics and financial literacy. Training. What else? A couple of years ago, I rewrote the National Financial Literacy Standards with a team of people to have a concise, one set of standards for the whole country to follow. So I've been in it for a while, and I'm. I'm a big advocate. I've been testifying for years to try to get financial literacy as a graduation requirement in Massachusetts for high school students. Right. We're not there yet. 25 other states have been asked to it, but I'm still not giving up.

Caitlin [00:04:06] So when I started, finding out more from Sara about investing all this, I decided she had to design a high school program to teach kids this because there couldn't be anybody. And so I was putting a lot of pressure. It's really nice to know that there's already a system out there, and that Sara, Sara's kind of off the hook, and this is so crazy that it wouldn't be the law that it should be in the high school. Like, what is the pushback? Why would people not believe teenagers should learn about financial literacy?

Jackie [00:04:40] It's a lot of politics, a lot of disagreement over what financial literacy is and what it isn't. Some states will want to combine it with economics. They're not the same thing. Economics and financial literacy are very different from each other, but some states will try to push it together. Some places will try to embed it in other courses so that it doesn't stand alone. And it's not taught on its own as its own subject. So you might see it embedded within a math course or embedded within social studies. So it has that know more of a historical flair to it. But I've also seen art teachers teach it. I've seen English teachers teach it. So it really depends on who's available, what kind of funding is available. Yeah. Although I really think it's just change. And people don't typically like change. There's there's always something out there, but I really think that there couldn't be anything more important than educating our students on how to handle money and take care of themselves and live within their means.

Caitlin [00:05:48] Sara, did you have a high school class?

Sara [00:05:50] I did not. There was something there. There was a class that I think in high school I tested out of, maybe because I. But maybe it was because I was taking some sort of, like, advanced math class. There was something offered at Marengo, but now I don't remember what it was called. And then in college, like, certainly I was in the College of Arts and Sciences, and I opted into my second semester, senior year of college to take a personal finance class. That changed my life and kind of led me down the path that I went to now. But like along these lines of like, why isn't this taught in school? I mean, that's probably the number one question that I certainly get asked. You know, when people eventually come to a financial advisor and say like, oh, I feel so lost. I feel like I'm making all of these, you know, bad choices or I don't even know if the choices are good or bad. I'm just kind of out on my own. So, Jackie, when you start teaching this to kids, a what age do you start having these discussions at and be like, what topics do you lead with?

Jackie [00:07:00] So it really depends in schools where they start with my school. We are an elective subject and we are an elective course and it is open to all grade levels. So each of my classes each semester ends up having students from grades nine through 12, which it it makes it difficult because some topics are hard to teach to freshmen. When I get to something like budgeting, freshmen are very different than juniors and seniors, where freshmen don't have jobs and they don't have regular income. So it's difficult to speak with them about budgeting. But that's where I take that personal part of the class in the title, and I make it personal for them. So instead of doing a monthly budget with them, they might do a budget for six months if they get money from the holidays or money from parents or a birthday or something like that. And I say, fine, your budget is going to be for six months. Let's figure out what you're going to do with that birthday money and where you're going to spend it over the course of six months, and I make it personal for them. I don't want them to miss out on the concepts of the class just because they're young and they haven't had a steady job, so that's where I try to make it personal to them. I start with behavioral finance and their feelings about money and where they grew up, and what they learned about money growing up to to kind of figure out how they feel about money now, what kind of decisions, were made around them and for them and how they formed their own feelings about money. And then I tend to go through topics as they would hit them in life. So we first start about having a job and that first time that they touch money, that first time that they are going to have money in their hands. And then we go into that, oh my goodness, I got this paycheck in who is like, where is all my money going to this person. And we talk about taxes and then we talk about checking accounts. Not necessarily for the reason of having to write checks out, but because I want them to have free access to their money. So I also get up off and soapbox quite often, and I tell them how to be good advocates for themselves, how to know what their rights are. They should never accept, a prepaid card for payment of working, and I want them to have free access to their money. So we look at all options of how to access their money. And that's, you know, something that I'll insert when we talk about checking accounts. That's actually where we are right now in my class. We just finished up checking accounts the other day, and next up we'll be talking about the differences between banks, online banks, virtual banks, neo banks, credit unions, and why they're all different from each other. And they all have little nuanced differences and and things that might make you think they're the same, but they really act very differently behind the scenes and on paper. So, you know, I gradually go through. So we kind of grow up together through the finances.

Caitlin [00:10:20] What is a neobank?

Jackie [00:10:23] A neobank is not necessarily a bank. It's more of a financial technology company. So it's, you know, anyone could be a fintech company and give you access to money on a card, but they're usually partnered with another organization who may be a bank. So you're not FDIC insured necessarily. So it could be, you know, your grocery store offers a special. Checking account, credit card, you know, offer for you. And it's not necessarily a legit FDIC backed checking account. Sara, I know you would know this.

Caitlin [00:11:06] Do you? Had you heard of a neobank before?

Sara [00:11:08] I didn't know it was called a neobank, but that idea of a fintech platform sitting on top of a bank and they're connected. But that company is creating the the app and is the face of the company is like, hey, we're offering 8.9% interest on savings accounts. And then someone is like, hey, should I do this? And I'm like, what are the FDIC limits? And they're like, it doesn't say.

Jackie [00:11:32] Yeah, like surprise. It like Verizon is not a bank, but Verizon has a checking account.

Caitlin [00:11:38] I had no idea.

Jackie [00:11:40] Right. They're not Verizon is not a bank. They don't have that charter to be a bank. But they offer you a checking account. And if you have to peel back the layers to see, are they working with a bank that offers that FDIC protection, or are they just a fintech company that's holding your money like a holding tank, like if you held the balance in your Venmo account, or if you held your balance in your Cash App account, that's not really protected.

Caitlin [00:12:09] Okay. So what they're doing isn't illegal, but eyes wide open if we choose to use their services, because essentially, if they or they lose their money, we lose our money, the government will not come in to make us whole.

Jackie [00:12:24] Right? It's it's like using a cash app or a Venmo. I tell my students that that's fine to transfer money back and forth to each other, you know, using that peer to peer model. But I wouldn't park my money there and not if I got, you know, $100 from a friend that owed me money. I personally don't leave my money just sitting there and one of those accounts, I pull it back out and put it into my checking account because I know that it's safe there.

Caitlin [00:12:52] Okay, I love the idea that you start with feelings about money, and I think Sara and I, our first two podcast episodes and season one were about feelings about money, and especially for women who feel like they should already know this. There's a lot of shame about both the way we spend money and what we don't know about investing and finance, and so it seems so smart to start with that kind of emotional part. That also was a surprise to me, for me to hear you say we start with feelings, but a lot of this centers around our feelings about money.

Jackie [00:13:28] I credit that to next gen personal finance. They are an amazing organization. They provide the best curriculum, the best professional development, the support for educators. They are at the head of advocacy for pushing forward and making states, get to the point where they want financial literacy to be guaranteed for all students and graduation requirements. And and they really turned me on to this financial, or the behavioral finance, behavioral economics. And it makes a lot of sense. And that's where I've shifted it toward the beginning, because I want the students to think about that more often. You know, why do I feel this way about money? And oh, it is okay to talk about, you know, we can have a conversation here and I can go home and I can talk to my parents or my family about money and not be ashamed of it or not be scared to ask questions. And I tell parents that at conferences and at open house night, that you might have your kids come home and ask questions about it, and I said, you can be open. You can decide how open you want to be. You don't have to say, you know, our mortgage is this amount down to the penny. But you can say, you know, we'll talk about budgeting and we allocate this percentage to this, or we have a weekly limit of this dollar amount for our groceries. They don't have to give out all the details, but they can talk about things in terms of percentages or even meal planning. You know, they can talk about how much they want to spend per meal. And as long as they're incorporating money and talking about finances in some way, it's better than nothing. Yeah.

Sara [00:15:14] Oh my gosh. I'm thinking about all of the feelings that much dredge up for the parents as they're having like, like then the parents have to be like, wait a minute, how do I feel about money? Like, how do I feel about this? Right.

Jackie [00:15:28] And I will say, overwhelmingly, the responses that I've gotten over the years have been so, so positive because the parents will say, you know, we wish we had a class like this. We never had any of this information at this age or even as adults. And, you know, I tell them, I'm sorry, but I'm the one that you can blame when you. Your child comes home and says, have you checked your credit report recently? What's your credit score? Have you reviewed your insurance premiums? Like, should we increase it? Should be, you know, what's the deductible? What? What are we going to do with these? So, you know, they they get grilled when they, when their kids go home. And it's kind of funny because they're like, you know, we never thought about these things or we haven't talked about them in a while. And it is about time that we review some of these things. So they say thank you. We're glad. We're glad our kid has gone through your glass because it's made us rethink things.

Sara [00:16:27] I love that.

Caitlin [00:16:28] I had a question, but Sara, you had one before.

Sara [00:16:30] I do like I have a question like listening to you talk through your curriculum. I'm wondering how you come up with the balance between getting into the weeds on some of these issues versus, developing that or giving giving the kids a broad framework to kind of establish their own, I don't know, financial path to some extent. And and the reason I ask is that. I mean, some of these things are really boring. How do you keep their attention?

Caitlin [00:17:03] You heard it from Sara. I've been saying that for three seasons.

Caitlin [00:17:07] Some of these things are.

Sara [00:17:08] I mean, the things I talk about are not boring because I talk about the stock market, which is super fun. But, I mean, I have this conversation in my practice with my partner Casey. She's a certified financial planner, and she's always wanting to talk about insurance and people's benefits. And I just immediately like, shut down. I'm like, nope, too boring. I'm skipping to the stocks.

Jackie [00:17:30] My students love talking about insurance with me.

Sara [00:17:35] Oh they don't. That can't be true.

Jackie [00:17:38] I'm serious. I'm serious. And the reason they love talking about insurance, and they get so into it, is because I will share my insurance with them. Yeah, I share my personal information with them to to an extent, but I tell them I am sick and tired of getting examples for you to share with you. So I, I have a horrific accident, actually two horrific accidents in my past where we talk about medical insurance. I happened to fall down the stairs and I broke my ankle so badly my foot was pointing the opposite direction, you know, and I was taken to a trauma center, and 24 hours of care cost about $35,000.

Caitlin [00:18:25] Like.

Jackie [00:18:26] But it brought in trauma care. It brought in, transportation to the hospital with an ambulance. It brought in vacation insurance coverage because it was right at my 40th birthday, and I had booked a big vacation trip. It covers disability insurance because I was disabled and couldn't work. It covers FMLA. So I show them with one person. Like, if you didn't have in all of these insurances, it would bankrupt the average person. And I actually show them my bills. I put them right up on the smart board and they go line item by line item and they go, are you kidding me? They charged you $100 for a self administrated medication. They're like, what's that, a Tylenol? Yeah, they charge you $100 to give yourself Tylenol and they get really into it. So I do that. I show them my car insurance, I pull up my policy and I show them I and they they nitpicky line by line. Well okay. So we see why you up to this one. But this one. Do you think that was worth it. Do you think you should do this?

Sara [00:19:33] I love that they're like micromanaging you.

Jackie [00:19:35] I love it. So it's it's a lot of fun. And I said, all right, I'm. I've been in a serious car accident as well. I was rear ended while stopped at a red light. And so I show them stuff from that car accident and I say, I'm done. We're not doing any more insurance lessons because I'm not going to give you any more life examples. I'm finished.

Caitlin [00:19:59] Yeah.

Jackie [00:19:59] So I think that's, you know, where I bring back the personal part of it. I'm willing to do that. You know, when we talk about credit, I. I pull up my credit score that morning and I flash it up on the screen, and with my credit score, it shows the little, graph, the line, line, graph to show like, where it's been. And my credit score is, it's good. It's, you know, 820 something ish. And they, they say, oh, what did you do back there. It had, you know, dip down to it's seven something at one point. And I explained to them, I said that's when I got divorced. When you get divorced, you know, most people are going to take a hit on their credit score. You know, through really no fault of their own. They might have to sell a home or buy a new car or move, or a lot of money is going to change hands, like a lot of things happen with that big life change. And I said, but look what happened. I got divorced right there. You can see it. And where did my credit score go? It went right back up. So, you know, I'm I'm honest with them about that kind of stuff because life isn't perfect.

Caitlin [00:21:15] Yeah. And it makes it so much more interesting to talk about these when it's with a story and your own story as the case study for them to really take it. I mean, I can't imagine if I had been exposed to that kind of because otherwise it's the most abstract, boring, like what if? And so it really is good on two lines. One, it's actual numbers, it's real. But also it's no longer a what if. It's like this is what happened, right?

Jackie [00:21:43] This is what happens.

Sara [00:21:45] Yeah. Or when this happens. Yeah. When because this is a pretty common occurrence.

Caitlin [00:21:50] And most of this stairwell thing. Let's hope that was a big fluke. I'm so sorry that happened to you.

Jackie [00:21:55] Oh fingers crossed. Right?

Caitlin [00:21:57] Yeah. Well, one of the things that caught my attention. I found you, Jackie, through a Facebook group that we're in together. We had never met before, but I saw that you had commented because you had been on an NPR program, or they interviewed you about how you used to use programs. I'm assuming something like I always call it Peter Pan, but I think it's a Robin Hood.

Caitlin [00:22:20] Robin hood you.

Caitlin [00:22:21] Wanted to, like, make the stock market interesting and accessible to your high school students, but that over time you realized it was sort of sending the wrong message and that you stopped. And I really, I think a lot of us that are parents or caretakers of young people are having nieces and nephews we really like, where's the evangelists that are like, you should know everything about finances right now. And we're grasping for things that like how to make it interesting to them, how to make them have some ownership of it and like get a taste while they're still dependents before they're on their own. So I can imagine that there's quite a temptation to be like, okay, here's 100 bucks, buy some stocks and just see how it goes. And I really want you to talk about your experience. Why you that turned out to not be the best way for you. And seeing over time with your students how to get them engaged or sorry, maybe it got them engaged, but not in a way that it got them engaged.

Jackie [00:23:20] In the wrong way. In a way that scared me. It's such a good point. I like a lot of other teachers. We wanted that interaction. We wanted that them to be actively learning and doing something that was so engaging that they were excited to be in class. And there are a lot of different simulations that you can play for stock market. And you, the students would basically build a portfolio and they would watch their stocks, they would watch their companies, and they'd see them fluctuate and go up and go down. But unfortunately, our classes aren't long term classes. At one point, I was teaching it over a term. I was teaching it in a trimester. I was teaching it. Now I teach it in a semester. So if you can imagine that that being 90 days of school, but I don't spend the entire 90 days on stocks. So realistically speaking, I can only cover investing for maybe a week, a week and a half. So if I am consolidating all of this knowledge of stocks and then and investing in all of it, and I'm getting to stocks, I might only cover stocks for 2 to 3 days. So to do the simulations in 2 to 3 days, my kids were turning into not just day traders, they were minute traders. They would buy a stock and, you know, ten minutes into class, oh, it's crashing, it's crashing. I gotta dump it. And I'm telling them, like, you know, you don't invest for minutes or hours. You have to invest for the long term. So it was turning them into exactly the wrong kind of investors, telling them, nope, just buy it and hold it. It didn't it wasn't sexy. So it was tough. And and then I, I can't say enough good things about next gen personal finance, but they created a simulation called Build Your Stacks and stacks. Stacks. And this simulation, it runs for 20 minutes and each minute represents a year. And in the simulation it introduces students to different investment tools. As, as the complexity grows. So at first they just have a savings account and then they're introduced to CDs and then they're introduced to, I think it's index funds and then individual stocks. And then there's some sort of profit. So I've seen it to be cotton or they can buy gold bars and they have to be on top of everything. So if their CD matures, they have to know to cash it out and then reinvest it. If they are seeing something go up or down, they over the long term they can buy, they can sell. But this has been the most realistic investment experience that I've been able to give to them because it it mimics 20 years. And it does give them the opportunity to have all different investment vehicles to work with.

Caitlin [00:26:31] In over a broad enough time horizon though condensed. So it's much more realistic then like Tuesday from 11:30 a.m..

Caitlin [00:26:41] To 11:45.

Caitlin [00:26:42] A.m., right.

Jackie [00:26:44] Where, you know, alphabet was doing great five minutes ago, but.

Caitlin [00:26:48] Now, oh no, they.

Jackie [00:26:49] Are tanking. So it's it's funny. And, in this particular game you can play it individually and. And it it's just you on your own. Or you can play it in a group. So I will give them the opportunity to play a game on their own so they can actually read all of the screens and read the introductions of, you know, when a CD comes in, what is a CD? And they can read it very carefully, and then I will run a group session where they all join my individual, they join my game, and all of them players are playing against each other. So you see their portfolios jumping up and down the screen, and they can see where they stack up against each other.

Caitlin [00:27:28] I think that that realization that they were using it, like getting adrenaline rushes from these quick trades and stuff, would be so confusing as a parent too, is like they are really into it. Like, surely this must be good. They're learning, right? And yet it's like, you know, it's pulling on all of the parts of like taking risks, short term thinking, all that, really enhancing those and not building out the more long term approach.

Jackie [00:27:59] Right. And it it served a bad purpose. And when we were doing it this way, I had one student that exploded and had, I don't know, I think I started them off with maybe $50,000 in their portfolios, and overnight has turned into about 400,000. And it's because at the very end of the game, at the very end, like maybe the last few hours, I would open it up and let them buy stocks that were under a dollar. And he just happened to buy a penny stock that exploded. And I'll tell you, it's like, whoa. Now it's like, well, crypto is now like the way that they are about crypto is how they were about penny stocks, you know, ten years ago. Yeah, they went nuts. So of course the all the kids heard about that happening in class. And they were begging me all the time to all turn on the penny stocks, turn it on like it is. So they were they were trading, but they were also doing all the speculation on penny stocks. It was it was rough. Yeah. And I used to play in the games with them too. So I would get into the game and they would try to beat me. I got out of that pretty quickly because I would, I would invest in the boring things, the things that I knew would just hold their value. And then I had oil, I had BP and this as you how how long ago it was. We came in one day and all the kids were looking at me and laughing and laughing, and it was right after the oil spill.

Caitlin [00:29:39] You know.

Sara [00:29:41] Like the 24 hour a day came of the oil spilling into the Gulf that was on CNBC all day, every day, that bet.

Jackie [00:29:49] And then they kept showing me pictures of ducks, you know, trying to use the dawn to clean off the ducks. And they're making fun of me. That was in the last place. And sorry. That's it. I'm not playing. I'm not playing your games anymore.

Caitlin [00:30:01] God. That's awesome. Well, when you, you know, short of. I mean, I think this is actually real. Like, advocating in our kids own schools to have financial literacy classes in high schools and maybe even suggesting that the next gen curriculum. I'm curious, for those of us at home with, maybe a nine year old, for instance, just say.

Sara [00:30:28] A nine year.

Caitlin [00:30:28] Just like out of the blue or, you know, middle school. What are things in the home finances that you're advising the parents to do? I'm thinking about our listeners that are like, okay, great, that class sounds amazing, but I don't have it in my area. So what are the ways that I can start including my kiddo? And you said already some of them, and I like that idea. Like if we're unsure of doing exact dollar amounts for like, this is exactly how I make, especially with younger kids who can't put it in context and can talk about it in ways maybe with peers that, would make someone uncomfortable or just get it wrong and create misunderstandings. I'm curious where you see where you see the exposure, what's teaching? What's giving them responsibility for family budget? Like what? What you're advising parents about?

Jackie [00:31:16] I look back to think about, you know, what I was doing with my son. He's he's 14 right now. And the number literacy is really important just to him for him to understand, you know, two is smaller than ten, you know, getting him to understand that just the, the relative numbers. Because if you can understand that I, if I have $10, I can't spend $12 understanding the numbers in the, you know, what's bigger than smaller? I was really happy that my son was learning about economics and financing and some of finances, and some of these words were entering his vocabulary in about the third grade. So. So I was happy when he was coming home with some of that. But he listens to what? He listens to what I say and he pays attention. So just using the words around the house and just talking about what you're doing. He just listens to what I talk about with about my students in just doing my lesson plans. And he's absorbed it. So that just showed me that he's been paying attention for a long time.

Caitlin [00:32:20] Yeah, yeah.

Sara [00:32:22] I will have to say, like along that line, I have two daughters. I have a, my my older daughters in sixth grade and my younger daughter's in second grade. And they, on several occasions have been like, mom and your friends come over, you guys just do boring stuff, like talk about the stock market. So, like, both of my kids thinks that when women get together, we talk about the stock market. And I'm like, that is awesome. I love.

Caitlin [00:32:46] That.

Caitlin [00:32:49] Not in every household. Yeah, I hear you.

Caitlin [00:32:52] Talk about it though. I know.

Sara [00:32:54] Right, because we're not always talking about the stock market. No, no. But enough occasions that that term popped into their head.

Caitlin [00:33:01] Well, and I wonder with something like the stock market, this could happen too. But just where that line is, I think all of us are trying to figure out between involving them, having them get literacy exposure and not having them worry about money. And like walking the line between, this is like what you said to your son. Like, you don't need to worry about this stuff, but I do want you to be aware of it. And I wonder if that comes up because you're I'm assuming you're teaching in a public school, and there's going to be a wide range of people in different economic backgrounds. So where the teaching turns to worry and where it's empowering and where it's like just kind of ahead of there where they need to be in terms of what they're thinking about. How do you figure that out?

Jackie [00:33:51] It that's tough. You know, I do teach in, a middle class district and it's becoming more diverse. We have students of, you know, all backgrounds, and I am very mindful of that. When I give examples, I try to vary things for activities because, you know, I could have a student in class whose parents don't bat an eye when they apply to college. That costs $80,000 a year, and the kids sitting next to them can't. You know they're not going to be able to go to college. They're going to go to work right after school, and you need to find something that's going to unify them both. And a lesson that's going to make sense for both of them. And that can be tough.

Caitlin [00:34:43] And I'm wondering if you noticed developmentally with kiddos how they're responding to this. Find it. Like if they find it empowering, it may be that it's it's not, possible to sort of paint a broad brush with this, but their own psychology as they develop their relationship with money, given their background that up to this point they don't have any control over they they didn't choose what family to be born into or what their access to resources was. If you find them, like getting excited, like I'm going to make all the right decisions and I'm going to be set up fine. Or like I still want the limbo. Second time I've said limbo and this season. Yeah.

Jackie [00:35:26] Well, I'll put it this way. Our class, Personal Finance, is an elective in our school, and when I first taught it 18 years ago, we had one section of it running for that year. So only one class of, you know, maybe 25 students took it for that entire school year. We had about maybe 1400 students in the school at that time. I am extremely proud to say that now we run about 12 to 15 sections a year. I got of personal finance and it is an elective. So I take great pride and joy in our department for making it be enticing and exciting and attractive, and showing our students that it's a class that they should take. And the students are responding well, they they want this. And I think it's not just because we're all awesome teachers. I think that they they realize that this is important. They need they need this.

Caitlin [00:36:30] Well, what a great service to for the whole family or for everybody that's involved with this in the students life. I can imagine they won't shut up about it once they start learning all of these concepts. And as you said, sort of going home, be like, what insurance do we have? Which of course would be super annoying and you'd be, you know, happy that your kid is worrying about because it's a role reversal. Usually, I think the parents are the ones that are like, you need to do this, you need to do that.

Jackie [00:36:56] Yeah, it is funny.

Caitlin [00:36:58] I know we have to get going. So, Sara, did you have any last question that you wanted to ask Jackie?

Sara [00:37:05] I mean, I have a million more. I know, I know.

Caitlin [00:37:09] Jackie, I'm wondering if you you can have the last word in what you believe that like, it should be parents mission before their kids leave the house. They should have exposure and literacy around which topics. If you have like a bullet list, I'd be curious just off the top of your head.

Jackie [00:37:27] For financial literacy. Yeah, definitely live within your means. Pay yourself first. I think those are my two and two big ones. The two big ones. I think if you're doing both of those things, everything else will fall into place.

Sara [00:37:45] That'll get you pretty far, That's awesome.

Caitlin [00:37:47] Wish I had known. Thank you so much. And Jackie sent me all of these resources that I'll put in the show notes, too. So check those out in on our website. Women on the verge.com so that you can find Jackie. If you want advice about how to start your own high school financial literacy program and other resources that parents can look at when thinking about how to help their teens get some our kids at any age, I guess, get financial literacy. Thank you so much, Jackie. This was so great to have you on.

Jackie [00:38:18] Yeah, this went by so fast.

Sara [00:38:19] Thank you. It's really inspiring. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing with us. I'm just inspired to do better. Yeah.

Jackie [00:38:27] Yeah.

Caitlin [00:38:28] And maybe you can do this too. Now, Sara, we'll get you hooked up with this.

Sara [00:38:32] I'm so grateful that you're out there doing this, Jackie.

Caitlin [00:38:36] I think that's it now.

Music transition by Bad Bad Hats

Sara Did you have a question about finance or investing? Send it to us in an email or voice memo on our website. Womenontheverge.com.

Caitlin Hey, we want our listeners to know that economic abuse can be subtle, but it's a serious form of control. Watch out for partners who limit your access to money. Sabotage your job or rack up debt in your name. If this sounds familiar, know you're not alone and there's help available. Please learn more at the hotline.org or call 800 799 safe.

Sara This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West, with music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.

 Music outro by Devmo

Devmo I know the first thing you notice is that I'm covered in gold, the flick of the wrist it could turn a hot bitch cold, to get what you want in life girl you gotta be bold. Now Imma die rich, and I know...

Sara This podcast contains general information that is not suitable for everyone. The information contained herein should not be construed as personalized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. There is no guarantee that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast will come to pass. Investing in the stock market involves gains and losses and may not be suitable for all investors. Information presented herein is subject to change without notice and should not be considered as a solicitation to buy or sell any security.