Money's Two Cents
Teaching your children wealth



Posted by Ismat Sarah Mangla

September 9, 2009 2:01 pm



A personal finance course at Wellesley College in Massachusetts is one of America’s 10 Hottest College Classes, proclaims The Daily Beast.
An impressive feat, given that other courses on the list include a Yale
lab that takes students on a trip to an Amazon rain forest and the
University of Michigan’s History of College Athletics, which brings in
storied Big 10 football coaches to address the class.
One former student of the personal finance course told The Daily Beast:
“Students take out loans and credit cards all the time without even
thinking about it. [The class] should be renamed ‘life skills’ and be
mandatory.”
Taught as an economics course by Ann Witte,
the class focuses on everything from insurance to taxes to investing.
And that’s a very good thing, considering that high school seniors who
took the Jump$tart Coalition’s financial literacy survey in 2008
scored worse than their peers did in 2006, answering only 48.3% of the
survey’s questions correctly. In fact, only 48% of those surveyed knew
that a credit card holder who only pays the minimum amount on monthly
card balances will pay more in annual finance charges than a card
holder who pays the balance in full. And just 17% correctly answered
that stocks are likely to yield higher returns than savings bonds,
savings accounts and checking accounts over the next 18 years.
But your kid doesn’t have to go to Wellesley to learn the basics of personal finance. PBS is airing “Your Life, Your Money”
tonight, Wednesday, September 9, at 9 p.m on most PBS stations (check
your local listings for details). The one-hour special for young adults
is hosted by Scrubs star Donald Faison and will feature
insights from special guests, such as hip hop icon Russell Simmons. The
show “isn’t a dry recitation of financial factoids or an abrasive
lesson of economic terrors to avoid,” says producer Tom Simon. “It
presents young adults in realistic situations that most people can
relate to in a serious, but upbeat, manner.” The program will address
banking and credit, investing, budgeting, insurance and self-employment
through the stories of six young people, including a college senior
with $30,000 in credit card debt, a freelance graphic designer and a
woman working at her family’s Mexican restaurant.
Faison talks about his own money mistakes in the special too. “I
spent a lot of money before I made it, and that was a big mistake,” he
told IGN.com “When I make a purchase now, I’m always like, ‘I know this
is a little bit more than I want to spend, and am I going to regret
this later?’”
For more information on the show, visit PBS.org.