Teaching Financial Literacy
by Steve Schullo
Next Generation Personal Finance Mission Statement: Our mission is to revolutionize the teaching of personal finance in all schools and to improve the financial lives of the next generation of Americans.
Hi Los Angeles Unified School District colleagues, friends, and relatives,
My typical mission for my blog is to educate teachers and anybody else to discover the stock and bond market and to begin investing for growth. But today’s blog is aimed at my teacher colleagues about teaching your students. Perhaps more teachers would take an interest in personal finance knowing how important it is to our student’s future lives. We know that the Millenials, GenX, and my Baby Boomer generation’s financial literacy are all wholly very poor. And we all know that financial literacy is a good subject to learn. My blog attempts to fill that gap for all age levels because it is never too late to discover personal finance for yourself so you can also inspire your students. I hope you enjoy this post. But beyond that, tell Tim that you heard about his great support for teachers from me!
Teachers love free stuff. We are naturally frugal.
As a teacher for Hoover St., Leo Politi and Alta Loma Elementary schools in Los Angeles for 24 years, by definition, I loved free stuff.
I know what you are thinking, “THERE IS NO TIME to teach another subject!” or “I don’t know anything about personal finance.” And you might agree that Mr. Rezentta has a great website full of everything financial that a teacher needs and will also agree that financial literacy is a crucial 21st Century skill and should be taught in our public schools. But getting the proper training and finding the time in your busy schedules to teach this makes it challenging. The question is, are you up for a challenge? Before you answer, just check out his website and refer Tim’s stuff to other interested colleagues.
Student Loans! What A MESS!
A perfect example of the difference that our high school students face that us older folks have not–Student Loans! OMG! We have all heard this terrible news for years now. Millions of current college graduates are straddled with huge college loan debt. Our high school students need to protect themselves and need to know how to fund their college education, manage these loans and their money right out of the gate. They cannot wait. Without assistance, they may have to pay more in tuition than is needed. Then, it’s too late.
The good news is that Tim covers student loans and MUCH MORE! By the time students finish Tim’s program, they will be ready for adult financial responsibilities like no previous generation. Have any of us had ONE class in personal finance in middle or senior high school?
Tim’s website is broken down into four basic categories for new teachers to NGPF website:
- TEACH! The Curriculum connection: https://www.ngpf.org/our-curriculum/
- GROW! Professional Development: https://www.ngpf.org/teacher-pd/
- ENGAGE! Ask Questions and Listen to Hundreds of Podcasts from a huge community of teachers and others who discuss personal finance: https://www.ngpf.org/community/
- ADVOCATE! Join a growing network of teachers, administrators, curriculum experts who are demanding the personal finance should be a mandatory subject. Our students (and their parents and us) deserve this incredible knowledge that I personally have benefited immensely in my life. https://www.ngpf.org/finhero/
A VERY SHORT sample list of what’s available:
- Units
- Semester, 8-week and 12-week courses
- Assessments
- 8-hour and 18-hour workshops
- Middle School
- Games and simulations
- Budgets
- Entrepreneurship
- Writing Resumes
- Career
- Behavioral Finance (The psychology of money, OH YES!)
- Getting that first job
- A question of the day
- Upcoming events all over the country
- Newsletter
- And so much MORE!
Some materials are available in Spanish.
Also Great NEWS! Tim is based here in California! But his staff is available for teachers nationwide.
Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit group based in Palo Alto, Calif., that offers free online classes and teacher training, as well as offerings from the National Endowment for Financial Education.
Tim’s Story
In 2011, Tim Ranzetta volunteered to teach a personal finance course to high schoolers in East Palo Alto, CA and spent countless hours searching for resources and cobbling together his curriculum. He felt there had to be a better way. A place teachers could easily find ready-to-implement resources, enabling them to plan less and teach more.
In 2014, Tim founded Next Generation Personal Finance as a non-profit organization to connect educators with free resources, professional development, and advocacy tools in order to equip students with the knowledge and skills to lead financially successful and fulfilling lives.
NGPF is a free high-school personal finance curriculum and professional development partner helping teachers deliver essential money understanding in an easy-to-grasp, engaging way. We offer a complete course of up-to-date, customizable lessons and activities designed to spark participation and make ideas memorable. Professional development and events build personal connections, enable knowledge sharing, and highlight information teachers find truly useful.
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Steve’s BIO
Stephen A. Schullo, Ph.D. (UCLA ’96) taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for 24 years. With his late husband, Dan, and co-author of their book, Late Bloomer Millionaires, Steve and Dan grew their wealth through real estate, stock and bond investing. Steve got his money from the model set by his parents through frugal living and living below his means. As an LAUSD teacher, he got ripped off by annuity 403(b)/TSA salespeople. After educating himself about stock and bond market investing, Steve wrote investment articles for the United Teacher-Los Angeles (UTLA) union newspaper for 13 years. Thrice featured retirement plan advocate in the Los Angeles Times and U.S. News and World Report. He co-founded an investor self-help group 403bAware for teacher colleagues and wrote 7,500 posts in three investment forums since 1997. Frequently quoted by the media, testified at California State legislative hearings and honored with the “Unsung Hero” award by UTLA for his retirement planning advocacy. For over 13 years, he serves as a volunteer on LAUSD’s Investment Advisory Committee as a “Member-at-Large” and former co-chair. The committee contains collective bargaining reps from the unions and monitors the district’s tax-deferred retirement plans, 457b/403b, of 55,000 former and current LAUSD employees, worth $2.8 billion in assets.
He started this blog, Late Bloomer Wealth, in 2012 to help all PreK-12 public school educators nationwide, especially his Los Angeles Unified School District colleagues. He belongs to a small national group of 403(b) advocates (mostly teachers) who want to bring closer attention to the annuity monopoly of the 403(b). During the last 20 years, over 30 newspaper articles have been published and each one says the same thing, TSAs (Tax Sheltered Annuities) are terrible plans and the salesperson gets the benefit from lucrative commissions and high costs. Nobody in the educational establishment reads these articles NOR talk about the proper place for annuity products publically. We gather and discuss how to reform the 403(b) on 403bwise.org and on 403bwise Facebook Group. Come on over if you want to join us so we can help our colleagues avoid and reform these self-conflicted retirement plans, TSAs. [/author_info] [/author]