Teaching children to school savings

Hudson is a picturesque town nestled in Wisconsin’s St. Croix River next to a population of about 12,000 people. Its more than 1,600 high school students, like other high schools, which shattered the quiet corridors of students change classes instantly. (It’s amazing how much noise adolescents.)

However, many schools, students can be installed in a narrow, storage room without windows before stopping at the Credit Union branch. High School branch in WESTconsin Credit Union is open to traffic three days from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm, some 100 students have an account there weekly. “It was at a young age, a way to promote financial literacy,” Jim Wookey, West said consin vice president. Adds, the district’s school career counselor “branch of the Save real.”

Hudson High School Credit Union branch is a small part of a larger movement to improve financial literacy, in the United States of American adults struggling to salt away more money, eager to establish a financial cushion against economic and financial turmoil stronger.

You can see the number of efforts. In these uncertain times, the personal savings rate has been hovering in the range of 5-6%, as well as the mid-2000s the figure above 1-2%. I have heard the desire to save more work talk with neighbors and for people to exchange ideas frugal, just as they used to share tips borrowing.

Perhaps most importantly, the US long-term savings drought and steep debt burden has spawned a youth financial literacy through college promoting cottage industries, from primary school. “It is important to get them into the habit of saving,” Nanmo Leeson Council for Economic Education, a nonprofit focused on economic and financial education of CEO.

As we all know, savings and financial literacy thing than ever before. Employers insist that their workers take retirement funds method of “do it yourself” is (think 401 (k) plan). Academy rely on parents and students to come up with more tuition dollars (think student loans). About three-quarters of US households have at least one credit card, from less than half (considered the minimum payments) in the early 1980s. Lenders are H clever ighlighting ease of use, while masking the true cost of loan repayment (think payday loans).

We have to re-learn the hard way, when the price of the financial pressure measurement is borrowing too much and save too little and high, stop foreclosure trauma, never-ending treadmill of debt payment discharge, and in our elders of shattered dreams.

Brands all these personal financial management is more important than ever. It seems almost every day for students who announced a new financial literacy programs. Few countries have taken compulsory financial education class in recent Virginia step.

Most countries and regions have pieced together the money lessons for their students, whether it is to provide elective CL ass personal finance, funds to encourage teachers to incorporate lessons into their existing curriculum or deep into the banks and credit unions field experience. The biggest problem: Academic studies have shown that large differences in the quality of these efforts.

School-based energy-saving projects have virtue to a computer simulation game converted into actual class lesson, or visit from the local banker for the inspiration to open a savings account. Most of us learn to do the best. This is the experience of Fowler High School in Syracuse, New York schools have half the residents live in poverty, which homeownership a community of only 20%. Do not trust or use traditional financial institutions in many students’ parents. Cooperation Federal Credit Union in late 2009 opened a branch in high school, the branch now has about 50 accounts, of which minority teachers.

‘This is to encourage people into the habit of saving,’ said Thomas Dellwo, financial education coordinator of cooperative federalism. “But we also want to make existing financial services and products, who have not been exposed to the financial services group of students in their lives elsewhere.”

A similar sentiment drove the previous generation in Europe, Japan and American reformers back to school-based savings. Historians date the idea of ​​the 1830s, in France. In the United States, is a pioneer J. H. THIRY, Belgium and Long Island City school committee immigrants, New York, he established the first school savings bank in their school T No. 4 in 1885.

In 1928, a school savings banks in the United States 46States, with the participation of four million students and over (current US $ US $ 1.22 million) deposit of $ 950 million. Idealists did not really want to help young accumulation of money, although this is a good incentive. No, the driving motivation is “the good things in consumption of thrift and prudent wisdom of saving lives …… acknowledge the need to encourage thrift, he wrote:” In order to teach Simon Strauss, president of the American Society for the thrifty 1920

The United States suffered frugality education campaign (and parents search account) during the great Depression. And the early years of the Cold War, the program does not expand during World War II, but it mainly refers to the patriotic movement TRANSFORmed buy war bonds. School-based savings bank all but disappeared in the late 1960s. Financial institutions considered too expensive to run. Public policy focus from young people about thrift and savings education to teach them about the changes in spending and borrowing. The concept of democratization of the 19th and early 20th century, savings, became the late 20th century, the idea of ​​democratization of credit.

It is heartening to see that school-based savings is something of a comeback. Although self-reported data is not complete, credit unions operate approximately 250 school-based curriculum in many countries banks. Save for the United States to help set up a school savings program known non-profit organizations across the country. Bank trumpet sponsored savings plan for internal and school youth.

However, it is still too fragmented in school financial literacy program combining savings, depending on the combination of abnormal commitment to education and community awareness of the financiers. Take measures at all levels of society – government, business and education – to expand school-based savings can be exciting young national dialogue between the need for greater thrift turning into a good habit of saving reality for the majority of Americans go far .

Put it this way: Modern young Americans have unprecedented purchasing power. However, this also means they have unprecedented power savings. And frugal to pay off the rate of return in a lifetime.