Our generation knows a lot about things like social media, how to use cell phones, and pop culture, but knows nothing when it comes to financial skills. We lack not just the knowledge of how to properly manage our money, but even the knowledge of what a financial skill is.
Enter Dalyse Young, from the company Capital Value Advisors, and Madonna Messina, the mother of three Liberty High School alumni. Earlier this month, the two spoke to social studies teacher Wes Benjamin’s personal finances classes about the importance of finances.
“Their goal is to make sure that students have an understanding of how important it is to have a financial plan of action,” Benjamin said.
Young and Messina spoke to both of Benjamin’s Learn and Earn Classes, as well as CTE teacher Louis Devita’s Personal Finance class and math teacher Randall Imes’s Personal Finance class.
“In my learn and earn class, we do a whole bunch on goal-setting, on how to manage credit cards, how to rent apartments, what I like to call life-skills stuff. Young and Messina went over a lot of that content,” Benjamin said.
The duo’s goal is to help teens learn the importance of wealth management and organization. During their speeches to the classes, they covered topics from finance organization and budgeting guidelines to impulse spending and goal setting.
“For students to hear the same topics emphasized by another person, it’s better than just hearing them from me all the time,” Benjamin said.