Mark Your Calendars: October 20 at 7 p.m. for a Presentation on Financial Literacy for Students and Parents
The Visitation Parents' Association and The Saint Thomas Academy Mothers' Club are hosting wonderful presentation on financial literacy by Nathan Dungan of the organization ShareSaveSpend. This event will take place at Visitation in the DeSales Auditorium at 7pm on October 20, 2009. All Vis and STA parents are invited and Middle and Upper School students are encouraged to attend. View the flyer here.
Nathan regularly speaks to standing room only crowds at schools around the country. For a sample of his no nonsense approach to educating children and teens about personal finance, watch this clip.
Below is an excerpt from Nathan's website www.sharesavespend.com
Problem
We live in a hyper-consumer culture and its powerful messages have escalated Americans spending to a crisis point. New research is surfacing almost daily that suggests families are in exceedingly stressful financial situations and desperate for new ways to deal with unsustainable spending patterns. And the emerging financial trends of the next generation suggest there is no let-up.
- Average credit card debt per U.S. household is more than $9,300 — Business Week
- More than 40 percent of employees say that stress over personal finances negatively impacts their productivity at work — Garman, Leach & Grable
- Young adults ages 25-34 carry an average of $5,200 in credit card debt — Business Week
- The after-tax savings rate for young people 35 and under is negative 16% — Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Children today spend FIVE times more money than their parents did at the same age (and that’s adjusted for inflation) – KGA Communications
- Young people 18 and under will spend and influence the spending of more than $1 trillion dollars this year.
Solution
At Share Save Spend, we believe that in order to achieve Financial Sanity, it is critical to engage in frequent money conversations. Research suggests that when people focus less on spending and more on sharing and saving, they are happier and healthier. In over 20 years of working with individuals and families we have developed a system designed to benefit individuals, couples and families. The Share Save Spend Process provides:
- An easy-to implement system that helps people rebalance their financial priorities;
- Simple action steps once awareness of the problem has been raised;
- A variety of tools and resources to help maintain healthy financial habits;
- Significant short-and long-term benefits on a multitude of levels (e.g. helps increase peoples financial capacity for saving and sharing); and
- A powerful antidote to hyper-consumption.