Last year, in a conversation with a senior who was the first in her family to go to college, the student mentioned how she was planning to take the full amount of financial aid she was eligible to receive. To my astonishment, she was taking on this massive student loan to have money to "live on" (i.e.: go out to eat, buy clothes, etc.). When I asked her if she understood what a student loan's interest and repayment schedule meant, it turned out she didn't. We had a discussion about the number of loans (one per semester) and interest rates, compounded interest, and so on. At the end of the discussion, she planned to go home and talk to her parents about taking just enough money to cover tuition and books. But the entire conversation had me thinking about financial literacy and how little our teens know about loans, credit scores, retirement savings and other important topics unless they take the personal finance class.
Fast forward a little bit and....we have Financial Literacy Night! With the help of Pirate TV, morning announcements, social media, and a couple ConnectEd calls, the available slots for upperclassmen and their parents filled up. (We didn't want to surpass the fire code plus I needed a number to plan for the food.)
Our guest speaker, Paul Pittman, is the President and Managing Director of The Preferred Client Group. He is a Certified Financial Planner. Mr. Pittman's talk covered budgeting (pay yourself first!), credit scores, retirement planning (start now and you'll have the retirement you really want!), and the truth about student loan debt. His frank and humorous discussion also left time for questions and answers about a variety of topics of interest to the students and parents attending.
At the end of the night, We held a raffle ticket drawing for prom tickets! The three winners were Bryson Bland, Haydn Ledenyi, and Faith Johnson.
