Kids' TV show teaches financial wisdom

By Ann DeFrange

Published: January 19, 2008

What is money? How do you get money? What can you do with money?

If those seem to be simplistic questions, trust some economic experts who insist that many adults cannot give the correct answers and don't live by the accompanying principles. And they certainly aren't teaching their children how to manage their finances. Another generation is growing up unable to balance a checkbook or keep out of creditors' claws.

While American school children are mastering global technology, officials with Junior Achievement said only 10 percent of them graduate from high school with any instruction in personal finance. If they go to college and drop out, half drop out because of grades; the other half quit because they're broke. If they do graduate, they can leave college carrying an average combined loan and credit card debt of more than $20,000.

Junior Achievement is a 90-year-old nonprofit organization that teaches young people financial literacy.

The group is a sponsor of a television program that begins on OETA Channel 13 in February. "Biz Kid$” airs Saturdays. It features catchy music and movement, kid actors and lots of talk about money. Co-sponsored by credit union organizations and the same company that produces the program "Bill Nye the Science Guy,” it will explore the trail of money through the community, and its role in individual lives.

Steve Kime, president of the local Junior Achievement chapter, said the program will supplement Junior Achievement volunteers' visits to schools, using curriculum for kindergarteners through 12th-graders. Kime teaches some himself, telling the children there are reasons to do their homework.

Math skills are necessary for a business operator to make payroll and figure how many orders to place; geography helps design a distribution plan; and people skills are helpful to managers.

Kime said educators, professionals and retirees volunteer time in schools to show how money and commodities move through a community.

It starts, he said, with a piggy bank. Many children don't know the difference between cash, checks and credit cards, and that the last two have to be backed up by the first.

The state Legislature passed a bill last year called the Passport to Financial Literacy Act. Going into effect in the fall, it lists 14 topics which must be taught, in some form, in Oklahoma schools, between the seventh and 12th grades.

Jennifer Wallis is vice president of Consumer Credit Counseling Services, a United Way agency in Oklahoma City. In Oklahoma, which has a "pretty high poverty rate and a high incidence of credit card debts, foreclosures and bankruptcies,” she said, Consumer Credit Counseling Services does one-on-one counseling with 23,000 clients a year. They never learned to handle their personal finances, and now they're in desperate situations.

Wallis agreed that a piggy bank is the first important teaching tool.

"The earlier you can start, the better,” she said.

Children should learn that money is exchanged for goods, and what things cost — so much out of the piggy bank.

"Lots of kids get gift cards,” not real cash, Wallis said, so they are not sensitized to credit cards when offers come to them in high school and college.

Wallis said many people go through their entire lives consumed by money problems, which become a constant source of stress in their lives. Oklahoma is one of the top-10 states for bankruptcies, Wallis said. Money is also a leading cause of divorce. Jobs can be imperiled because of collection calls, she said, and people who have bad credit spend $25,000 more over a lifetime than people with good credit.

"You don't have to live that way,” she said. "We think people should know better, but if you're never taught, if parents don't have the skills themselves, then you won't be financially literate.”

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