A victory for my wife.
After about a decade of trying to get me involved in Girl Scouts, my wife can *finally* claim victory! She has been a troop leader, “nut” and “cookie” mom, service unit manager…. Ugh! I had valiantly evaded previous attempts to get involved due to other pressing involvements, but I couldn’t in all good conscience evade any longer. I had the time, the knowledge and the inclination. Recently I was asked by the Girl Scouts to teach 2 workshops for teen girls, one on money and investing and the other on business ownership - topics I am no stranger to and I believe we are not adequately teaching young people.
This lack of financial education has far-reaching effects. One of the problems of course is that parents (at least of my generation) lack basic financial literacy themselves. The learning has all been “seat of the pants” and it isn’t always pretty to watch. Consider the increases not only in credit card usage but in average credit card balance amounts. Consider our appalling low savings rates. Consider that once America was the world’s largest creditor nation and are now it’s largest debtor nation.
I think one of the answers is financial literacy.
The Girl Scouts have 2 workbooks for use in these workshops entitled “Got Money?” and “Mind Your Own Business”. While they provide a good overview of the topics, they’re awfully dry. I have a couple of ideas on ways to make the topics more interesting so I don’t lose my “victims”, oops I mean “students” and I’ll share them here in the coming days. Maybe they’ll be of help to you.