Good afternoon everybody. My name is Bruce Weber and I'm the Dean of the College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware. And it's my pleasure to welcome you today to our February offering in our lifelong learner webinar series. And today we've got a terrific panel setup to discuss a very important topic today, financial literacy and will run until one o'clock. And we need to remind you that we're in a webinar format, so we're in zoom, but this is not set up as a Zoom meeting, so we do not see you, but you can see us. We can't hear you either. So the Q and a function that you have at the bottom of your screen is what we'd like to point you to towards so that you can ask questions of our panel that they can address towards the end of our hour together. We're really pleased that you're here with us today and we do hope you'll join us for our upcoming webinars in this series we're putting on one a month we started IS this in the fall? It's gone tremendously well, we've got an attendance of around 200 people per webinar. So we're really drawing a large audience of alumni, students, faculty, and local contacts if the learner College, our next seminar in March, will be about professional selling and the future of sales in the sales function. In April, we'll be putting together a panel on healthcare outcomes and how they can be improved by artificial intelligence and tools such as machine learning. And then finally in May, we'll have a panel kind of forward-looking on disruptive technologies and how these are going to change many industries and the, the, what the future will be for our digital marketplaces down the road. So three very interesting webinars that we do hope you will join us for. Next. What I'd like to do is pass off the webinar to my very good colleague, Professor Carlos Ceasar. Who is that? James O'Neal, Director of the Lerner College Center for Economic Education and entrepreneurship. Taken away, Carlos. Thank you very much, Dean, whoever Thank you for inviting me to moderate the panel today. Thanks everybody for joining us. We are going to be talking about financial literacy today. But before we begin with the panel, we're going to follow a three or four-step process in which at first I'm going to share with you a little bit about the work that the Center for Economic Education and entrepreneurship. Thus, then we will introduce the panelists. We'll have the panel and we'll have a session at the end for questions and answers where you'll be able to ask any questions that you may have in mind. And we'll make sure that our panelists can address those questions for you. So it is hard to believe, but the center is celebrating 202150 years of making sure that we provide the tools to students and educators to be successful contributors to their own well-being and that of our society. And in fact, over the 50 years, the reality is that our mission and our vision have not changed. Our vision is to prepare K through 12 educators and economics, personal finance and entrepreneurship. And division is to make sure that what we pass to the educators makes it to the classroom to see students graduate as informed and productive citizens. And then they can contribute to their own well-being and prosperity that of the world. And so if you want to look at our annual report from last year, from 20192020 academic year. You will see that we were really busy during that academic year and we did a 143 trainings of, uh, obey the gators, excuse me, we have more than 2 thousand teachers that came to the trainings. And overall, the lessons that we provided, the educators made it to more than 200 thousand students. And if you were to look at the measures, the prays that we get for the work that we do. And I know many of you are actually in the business community. So this is something that we pay very close attention. We want to know how our customers, the people that we serve, feel about the lessons that we provide and the work that we do. You will see that 95% of those who participated, participate it recommend the professional development that we did, and 91% are able to use the Professional Development in their classroom. So we're very happy with the effectiveness and the use of the materials that we create in the classrooms. When it comes to financial literacy, we've been making some progress over the past few years. And in fact, the Council for Economic Education puts together the survey of the states where they look at economic and personal finance, literacy and the offerings and all of the states in the United States. And one of the things that came out of the latest report was that there has been some change that is taking place. And Delaware is one of the states that has actually participating in that change. And for the first time, this academic year, 2021, we are implementing personal finance standards in the state of Delaware. That is a great step, is the first step of many steps, but it's a great step. And so the center has been identified by the Department of Education and Delaware to be the unit that works with the Department of Education to develop training for teachers curriculum resources to model the implementation of the lessons in the classrooms. And so we've been really busy this academic year. We have ten workshops that were offering just for that particular effort, your financial literacy standards. What I want to give you before we start talking about the importance of financial and economic literacy with our panel. It's a, it's a basic view of some of the key programs that we offer to help students, to help students have the K through 12 level, undergraduate and graduate level, as well as families, families in Delaware. One program I want to share with you is call economics for kids. And this is a program that we do in partnership with the Department of Justice and also do in partnership with whiskers. And what we're doing this program is we, they lessened books that the kids had, the students have to read in their schools. And then we create lessons duo with the books to infuse economic and personal findings content in them. And so what we do then we train the teachers. The teachers take the lessons to the students and they learn about economics by simply reading books. We also have the stock market game and the stock market game. We have thousands of students in the state of Delaware learning the stock market. This is a program that we also do with the Department of Justice as well as with with this. And what the students do is they have ten weeks to invest 10000.100000, excuse me, in ten weeks on real time and learn about the dynamics of the stock market. And then we do a ceremony at the university be to award the teams that get the larger returns. That's really a fantastic program that we have. The children's saved. They some of you may have been involved with this with the entire community in Delaware. And so what we do here is we have two to 300 volunteers. They go into classrooms and do personal finance lessons. With the students, we're going to do it this year, or we're going to do it virtually. So we are going to use our platform that we have for the program to link volunteers from the business community to schools and do the presentations. Actually virtually. And we also have a program called Mini society, where their students open their own society and their classrooms. And this is a partnership that we have with M and T. And they chew their own currency, they create their own businesses and they even have a market day where they get to sell what they actually produce. At the high school level, our QI program is key to financial success. I am going to let Andrew Hill actually tell you a whole lot more about that program, but it is a partnership. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the Delaware council on economic education. We have more than 33 high schools in Delaware and more than 4500 students that participate in some of those students then go on to participate in the Delaware personal finance challenge to competition at the state level that we partner with Bank of America to offer to students learning personal finance in the state. And not only do we offer that competition, but there are also prices at the undergraduate level. Recently we did our financial literacy for young professionals. And this was youth an offer and that was volunteer. Volunteer. And for students, we have more than a 130 students that came to that webinar to learn about financial literacy and financial tools, students are thirsty for these kind of information. So this is the undergraduate and the graduate level. We have the master of arts in economics and entrepreneurship for the Gators. This is a heavily subsidized program for educators. It was started in 1981, so we are celebrating our 40th anniversary is the only program of its kind in the world. And the way that it works is we have 25 to 30 educators from all over the United States and internationally come to Delaware in the summers for two summers to learn the content. And then they go back to their schools and they help others learn that content to implement plans and take some more online classes is a wonderful program. We've had more than 500 graduates. And to finalize things, I want to show you how we are involving financial literacy in the community. And so one program that we have is the personal finance academy. This is a partnership with TD Bank and what we do is it's a dual program. We bring families in, we work with the students, with readings and lessons and so on. And then the parents get put in a different room where we worked with them on personal finance lessons, wonderful program to try to bring the entire community and families together. And then the final one that I'm going to mention here is Delaware money in partnership with Discover. And what we're trying to do here is make sure that our community is aware of all the tools and resources that are available to them. They have questions about budgeting or saving, or for 01 or fraud or whatever it is related to personal finance. We want to make sure that we can link them with the agencies that provide free services in the state of Delaware. So while it is difficult to believe that we've been doing this for 50 years now. We're really excited about the work that we do and we're looking forward to doing it for another 50. And with that brief introduction about the work that we do at the Center, I would like now to introduce our panelists. And in fact, I'm just going to let you know who they are, but they will be doing a self introduction to you, letting you now a little bit about themselves. They're all graduates of the University of Delaware. Da-da, da-da. Who's a retired senior vice president for Fidelity Investments, RAM broom and who is the executive vice president and CFO of IQ via Andrew Hill, who was the economic education officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. And Mary Souter, who is the Assistant Vice President and economic education officer at the Federal Reserve Bank, St. Louis. So we're going to have a great panel. Thank you all four of you for joining us today. And I'm going to turn it over to Donna phone done a little bit about her self so you can go ahead. Thank you for joining this. Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Thanks. Nice to be able to gather or even during the snowstorm. So I'm in New York and as Karla said, I retired from Fidelity Investments after 33 years in financial services. And I spend my time volunteering both serving on boards such as I'm a trustee at the University of Delaware. And hands-on, I had been working in the school system before schools closed and then moved to working through many organizations that help with food and security during this pandemic. So thanks for having me. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. All right. We're going to move on now to Ron broom and please Hi, I'm Ron Bowman. Circle of IQ via were a twelv $1 billion company that provides data Indiana with its software, clinical trial services too, like sciences industries. And interestingly, we are running two of the major COBIT trials, currently, AstraZeneca in Johnson and Jon-C trials. So very relevant. Almond 82 grad of Werner and have enjoyed being part of the program here at University of Delaware and looking forward to today's panel. Thank you very much, Ron. We appreciate you being with us. Well, alright, we're going to move on to Andrew Hill from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Enter. Hi everyone. I'm Andrew Hill. I'm the economic education officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. I lead our economic education program and our personal finance efforts with K12 teachers. I've been at the Philadelphia Fed since 2002. And I got three degrees from learner, all on economics. And then I kinda learned the econ ED K12 world while on the job with the great help of everyone at the center as well. We've partnered with the Center for many, many years. Really happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Thanks for joining us and thanks for all that you do. And finally, I would like to welcome Mary suitor to join us and please let us know a little bit about herself. Carlos, thanks so much for having me. It's an honor to be among these panelists. I am, as you pointed out, I'm the assistant vice and Assistant Vice President and economic education officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. And like Andrew, I'm responsible for economic and financial education outreach to educators. We work with Pre-K through college educators, often the offering professional development and resources for use in their classroom. I am a graduate as of, of the master's degree and economic entrepreneur economic and entrepreneurship education. So I have a strong ties to the center and, and have great partnerships with the center and with Andrew at the Philadelphia Fed. Thanks again for having me. Thank you Mary, and thank you for joining us. So, Mary, we're actually going to start with you because we are living, working. As we look at the panel here, we're going to try to work our way out starting in the K through 12 system all the way through high school and then going on. So we'll start with you. Thanks for everything that you do. You're doing a terrific job leading the Economic Education Department and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. You're wonderful partner with us at the center your gum in the summers with our master's students, you are a graduate of the program. Really focus on education for young children, right? So I'd like to ask you to begin the band and what economics and personal finance contents should we be teaching young children? So that's great question. Thank you. I'm, I, I think it's really important that we begin to introduce young children to the basics of personal finance. So one thing I think that we can teach them that seems obvious, but they often don't realize is that we work to earn income. That adults work to earn income. And so teaching them that and then perhaps as a parent or grandparent, offering the opportunity for them to actually do some work and earn some income. I'm from that then I think we need to talk to them about the fact that everyone has to make choices about how they spend their income. And it's really important because young children often think that they are forced to make choices by adults. But when they are adults, they won't have to make choices. So we want them to recognize that we all make choices about what we buy and how we save and helping them with understanding that and seeing opportunities for you as a parent or grandparent to talk about the things you buy and the things you don't buy, what you're saving for and why. So they come to recognize that we're all making choices. I think it's also important that we teach them that there are consequences for our decisions. We often don't like the choices that our children are making when they're buying a toy or whatever they're spending their money on. But we have to let them make the choice and then live with the consequences. And that's really painful for parents because typically we want to jump in and save them from whatever the consequence was. But rather they would suffer these consequences with small financial decisions to learn from them as opposed to learning with a big financial decision. I think we also need to teach them that we do spend, we save and we gift some of our income and offer them opportunities. See I saving. So it seems old school but a small ajar with points in a piggy bank to get them started so that they see you putting money into that jar, a piggy bank and they're putting money in. And when that piggy bank is full, helping them open up an account at a bank or credit union online or mart, brick and mortar, so that they take the next stuff and they understand that those are safe places to keep their money. And that there's the potential for law earning some small amount of return on that money. So those are important things for them to, for us to teach them. And then also actually requiring them to save some portion of the money that they earn or receive. And requiring them to give some and help them see that you are giving as well. So they need both the experience and the observation of seeing you do these things. We want to teach them to save regularly. It's really important that they understand, even if they're only saving a little, that they are developing that habit of saving. So we want to teach them to do that early and regularly. And that's really important because teaching, saving and teaching them to safe regularly helps them to develop the ability to delay gratification. And that's an important thing for people to be able to do. To delay gratification. It contributes to our ability to build financial wealth, but it also contributes to our other two other areas of our life as well. Thank you, Mary. That's wonderful. And as I listened to you, I I haven't 121417 year old that it bound to college. And I think I have both spectrums. One that the 12-year-old does not like to spend a dime. And then I have the 17-year old that can not have a dime on his hands has to be spent immediately. So you answer the question about the content and why it is important. But I also know that we've, we've worked together, you the center, all of us looking at misconceptions that children have. And so can you tell us a little bit about for the parents that may be in the panel, what are some of the misconceptions that children have? Sure. So first of all, it's really important too, that we know kids start to develop their financial habits as early as seven. So we want to start to build good habits with them early and to intervene. But we also know that they make meaning about their financial world by observing what we do, right? And the things they see us do aren't really clear in terms of finances. So they might see you pay for your gas at the service station with a credit card or a debit card, they see you go to the ATM machine and get money from it. They see you pay for groceries and you not only get the groceries, but the cashier's hands, you money. You've gotten and all you did was hand her a plastic card. So they look at that and they don't recognize that there's payment happening here. So having they build this misconception about not paying with money. And I actually had the experience of a little boy who asked my daughter why she was buying her gas with money because her dad didn't he used a card, he didn't pay for its gas. So they see these things and they build their own meaning, these misconceptions. So we want to correct those. We want to correct those misconceptions and help them better understand. We want them to understand. Have money come out of the ATM machine or to get money out of your grocery store. At the grocery store, you need an account at a bank that actually has a balance in it. That's one step. We want them to recognize that when you buy something with credit, you have to pay for it later. And that's a conversation that has to happen. You don't have to tell them how much you're paying later. You don't have to tell them how much you spend on your credit card bill, but they need to recognize that there's a bill that comes later that you pay. So those are, those are some of the misconceptions that they have along with the idea that that you don't really did adults don't have to make decisions. So we want to again reinforce that observation because there the idea that you make decisions because they're not seeing that necessarily the way you think they see it. They're building their own meaning from the world around them. Another example is the kids don't understand how banks work. They think, thanks, keep the money. But they don't understand that. Thanks also lend money. Okay. So if my children my father-in-law would give them to dollar bills for their birthday. And they would think if they put those in the bank, they're going to get those exact to dollar bills back. And so they have these very, very narrow understandings. It really is necessary for us to expand on those by just talking as a parent. And of course, there are lots of lessons and you at the center provide many lessons that teachers can use to address these misconceptions? Absolutely. And I think the modeling part of the EU share is really important. I think if I, if I look at what we do in my household, I'm more about the comfort of pain things through the credit card and then sometimes Kim has to come to me and say, hey, you know, you're really ended. The kids have to dig those $20. They need to go to the bank or write it out on the chicken and the checkbook and make sure so if it wasn't for her, we probably will be doing a little bit on the more the conference I but you have to model these things for them, so yes. Absolutely. Completely agree on that. Thank you very much, Mary. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. We're going to move on to do andrew now, also a wonderful partner of the Center. He's also a member of the Council for Economic Education, comes during the summers to work with our graduate students in the master's program. And obviously at terrific partner with keys to financial success along with a couple of the graduates from the, from the program at the University of Delaware. So Andrew, you know, we've seen in financial and personal finance phase growth at the high school level, right? So we are seeing more stage adding standards and testing students. What do you think that's the case? Well, I think that 11 answer to that is that, that people really view personal finance as something that should, that, that's complex and that should therefore be taught until high school. And I think that's actually one of the mistakes. So echoing what Mary said, starting early is really, really important. And part of that's because you don't want to wait to high school. But I think the interests comes from the fact that people understand the complexities of their own personal finances. And they think that we have to wait till high school. We really think and I think Mary I know Mary agrees with me on this and that those of you at the center as well, that it really needs to be a progression from K to 12 where we're starting at the young grades. I think some of these concepts are actually easier to teach at the young grades. And then we're getting to high school and we're building a capstone type experience, which is what we've done with keys to financial success. And there's some other options out there as well. So waiting until high school is probably not a great thing. But the fact that people are interested in seeing more of this at high school is important. We wouldn't wanna wait. We wouldn't want to stop, for instance, eighth-grade. There are some things that are complex and need to be taught in high school. But we want to make sure that the basics are started the younger grades as well. You know, I always say that one of the things that to me is a real litmus test about the importance of this work is if you're traveling, when I'm traveling, I, people say, Well, what do you do for a living? If I, Sam and economists, people sort of shut up. They don't really know what to say. But if I tell people that I train teachers to teach kids about money, I always get the same answer, which is, I think that's really important. I wish my kids had gotten out when they were in school. I wish I had had it when I was in school. So this really to me is the evidence that this is something that's really important. And we know from surveys that had been done of parents. Their parents say that this is something they want kids to learn in school. They don't want to be left to be being done at home. And then also the students have also said when they'd been surveyed that they think this is something that's important for them to learn about in school. So those are all, I think, really important indicators for us about why this is important for K 12. And again, having that high-quality capstone experience in high school, something we want to have there for kids. And I think when you when you talk to people and you travel and so on. And same thing for me, but it's kinda via I wish I knew where I wish I knew then what I know that now and write about personal finance. So we are doing a great job with the keys to financial success course, which is offering, like I said at the beginning, 3033 high schools in Delaware. But its offer another stage that you can tell us more about that in more than 4500 students going through the curriculum here in Delaware every year, he's not required for students to take it sorts offer in the schools. But yet we're reaching quite a few students in the state. Can you tell us a little bit, and you've done research on this, a little bit about the effectiveness of the program and the keys. And the keys that the students take out or get out of the program when they're done. So the center and the Philadelphia Fed it and working for now, very close to 20 years. Well actually this will be our 20th year together working on this project. And we've had a number of iterations. We've Revise the curriculum and we've trained about 400 teachers together. And those teachers are primarily in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. We have well over 10 thousand kids that are taking a he's to financial success course from a trained teacher every year. And we've done a lot of research and and Carlos and my name is Eris also at the center and I, we've, we've done, we've published a number of papers. In our 2014 paper, we pre and post tested the students using a, a test that's standardized tests that's nationally recognized. And we found that our students grew by over 60% in their personal finance knowledge after taking a semester. He's to financial success course. And this is a big gain, is bigger than really any of the other gains that we see out there in the personal finance space. And I think one of the reasons for that is that we're intensively teaching students. So I think some of the lessons that we've learned are you don't want to just do short interventions. It's not just having a guest speaker come to a classroom. While those things can be valuable as part of an overall plan, you really need to have a plan, especially at this capstone Hi, to teach kids comprehensively. So our keys program now has ten themes, and that starts with an intensive look at decision-making. And it runs all the way through things like bed budgeting, the wise use of credit. But it also looks at things like credit scores. How, what is the types of things that are going on when people get a credit score Y to credit reports matter. We know from our research that kids enter high school or at least enter their keys to financial success courses with no knowledge about credit scores. By the end of the course, they're able to really explain what a, what a credit score is, what a credit report is. These are the valuable things that I think are really important at the high school level. One of the things we also know from our research is that teaching kids that they should save at the high school level is really not something that's going to bear a lot of fruit. They already know when they start the course that they should save. It's the more intensive aspects that higher level aspects of personal finance space. How do you save? How do you think about the decisions that you're making? How do you think intensively about whether you're going to use credit versus cash when you make a purchase. It's the higher level stuff that really by high school we should be teaching, not the should aspects. So we've learned a lot of lessons from keys and each year we take what data we get from our research and we make improvements on the program over time. So we think it's worn a lot of fruit. Certainly tens of thousands of kids have been taught personal finance. And our teachers come to us and say that they have teach kids that come back to them after they've graduated and saying, you know, that was extremely valuable course I didn't necessarily recognize how valuable it was. And even if every kid doesn't remember every detail from that course, I think just like so many other courses that we teach high school kids. Having a personal finance course is going to get them to think about and remember that they need to go back and look something up or consider that. So we think that this is a really important aspect of our personal finance work. And asking some of that feedback, Andrew, both from these struck theirs, but also we have that essay competition that we put together every year with the students actually right now and explain what they've learned in the class and how valuable it has been to them. So it's a wonderful program. And I'm really happy that we're doing it together and we'll continue to do these now online too. So we offer a way of training teachers that is more convenient to them as well so they can come to the Fed in the summers and they will be able to beat train online. Just happened to be, you know, it's January and the principal comes to them and says, hey, you're gonna be teaching personal finance and so we can train them at their own schedule. So thank you Andrew, for for your comments. We're gonna move on to do run, run your next. Thank you for joining us today. You have been a terrific partner of the Center as well, both with your time, calming and doing things like bring your own dinner and movie nights where you talk about personal finance or gum into the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia to attend the trainings, as well as financially allowing us to have a graduate student at the center that is in the PhD program helping with our program. So it is very obvious that economics and personal finance really important and you're passionate about it. Why, why is it, why is it that you think personal finance and economics so important for suicide? Karla said, I think there are two big areas, reasons for that. One is that a basic understanding of personal finance is really an essential life skill is our other panelists have pointed out here a couple of shocky Statistics. 40% of the people in this country have reported that they can't afford an unexpected $400 expense. Four out of five, people had saved less than one year of earnings to retirement. In 15% of people have no retirement savings whatsoever. No, there's some hard luck stories that explain some of that, but I view it at least to as great a degree as a failure of people to learn and practice basic budgeting in financial planning skills. Look, you know, we all know that people who are in this situation, the 40% or the four out of five who go and buy a $5 latte every day, who trade in their car every three years you run up their credit cards. So, you know, luxury purchases in it. And yet you don't get into trouble. And you know, back to our educational system, which we ask our kids to take years of history, for instance. And I'm not picking on history, but a lot of that work for that pretty promptly. But we don't teach them the basics of things like how to balance a checkbook, How to the importance of savings and how best to say. And finally, you know, things like the power of compound interest, which puts him in the position where you can retype it. That's number one at the second reason. Maybe that's obvious one and said passion about economic and financial education is it makes us more informed voters. You know, somebody policy decisions out there that are elected representatives are making. Or are being driven, are underpinned by economic issues. And let me just take one and at the risk getting a little political here, that's in the news right now, and that's a $15 minimum wage. And this is very popular with politicians because it's, it's something that, that people broadly support. But there are some issues, you know, any economist will tell you. When you set a floor and place above the market clearing price, you get too much supply to demand in, you get a surplus. And what that surplus in this market is increased unemployment being decreased opportunities for people entering the workforce. And you know, this, this is something that economists know. They also know that there's not just one market for labor but their rural areas in the country, cursive city areas, then you can get a lot of trouble in closing the same pricing structure on both areas. And they also know, and this goes back to kind of theory of elasticity. Demand changes over time. You know, the same guy who's running a store who has to pay that minimum wage day one, as someone who's going to figure out how to work around that day to automate. We see it when it comes to grocery stores, he got selves itself, checkout, Home Depot, self-serve kiosk. Y'all remember toll takers, they're going now. So people automate irrelevant. My point here, again, it's not to get political, but just to say there's no such thing as a free lunch. There all sorts of things from wrenching troll, the terrorists, the autumn minimum fuel economy standards. Will we have to consider the second-order effects of making decisions trying to drive markets and these things very well may be worse. The issue that we're trying to solve. That's wonderful, Ron, and I think the idea of having informed citizens that actually go and vote on issues that have in are related to economics and personal finance is incredibly important. So, can you tell us a couple of personal finance and economics skills that, you know, being an econ graduate from the University of Delaware, or they have help you in your professional career to be as successful as you've been. Sure, love. You know, it's very hard to isolate one day because the actual profession, like it's quite a lot of the skills I'd have to, I kinda like to draw the analogy of a house. You know, the foundation of the house FOR ME, financial education, what i use in workforce is my economic education at the University of Delaware. I was an economics undergrad. But on top of that, you know, my son who's an engineer, was asking me to be a business someday. What courses should I take as electives in business? And I said you really ought to take an accounting course because accounting is the language of business. If you can't, you don't know what revenue means. You don't have gotten depreciation means or capital expenditures, whatever, you're going to have a hard time interacting with people in business. And I can describe a counting. And perhaps also discounted cash flow, which is important to investments. It's kind of the superstructure of the house that you well and in the roof and so forth. And on top of that, you can build other skills. Be at Treasury, Investor Relations, tax, mergers and acquisitions or whatever. And you could point out that the interior of the house and all of those had been very important in my career. But if I had to point to three in particular, that had been very valuable as a financial professional in that a lot of people use no matter where they are and they assess whether it's in finance or marketing or manufacturing, engineering, whatever. It's having a basic understanding of markets, how they'd work. That's economics, understanding at least the basics of accounting so you can speak the language in business and then discounted cashflow analysis. So when you're making investments, you know how to assure that you're getting an adequate return on investment. So now everybody who is listening to us, if they don't have those three, they need to go back and start looking at textbooks and learned more about the right, right, and taking classes. Thank you very much, Robert. I just want to acknowledge that I do see that there are four questions weighting and so I'm going to wait until we have all four panel is go through and I'll answer the questions. So if you ask a question, please know that I know that it's there and I will handle that at the end. So we're now going to move on to Donna from Tana. Another one there full an incredible supporter of the center again, both with her time as well as financially and of course, being addressed the University of Delaware. So thank you for everything you do because of what you do, you allow us to have a dedicated personal finance coordinator in the state of Delaware to support all of our efforts, as well as a post-doc, they can help us in the center, so we're very appreciative for everything that you have them, but you know, one of them. Best academic experiences I've had. And when you invited me to go to New York and then to Harlan to do an economics lesson at Citizen Schools. And I know that you volunteer there for eight years while you were a senior vice president that fidelity. And so we've gone from the importance of financial literacy at the K through 12 level and then to citizens in the workplace. Why is it important for people who have a financial background to volunteer their time in their communities. And we can hear you donot SERDP them White. Yeah. There we go. Sorry. My firm I super was just calling to find a leak in the apartment below me. I said I can't talk right now. I'm about to whom? Oh boy, though. So ten years ago, I saw a documentary called Waiting for Superman and adds to it shows you the challenges of in the public education system and the desperation that parents go through to get their kids in good schools. And even though I'm not an educator, it immediately, I wanted to be part of a solution because as Ron said, like an educated populace makes four, makes better decisions. So fortunately, there are organizations out there that allow you to participate in extended learning day programs in the public schools. And one of them in New York is called Citizen Schools. And, and you don't need to have an education and teaching to, to utilize the curriculums that they make available. So we've, we found this program and we reached out to our friends from business school. And every Tuesday we would leave our offices about three o'clock. We would take the subway up to East Harlem. We arrive in our suits and our high heels. And we taught a class called the secrets of a millionaire. And obviously it had to have a catchy title because that's how you're going to draw and sixth graders. And it's really important for these students to see people in the community interested in their fate. I mean, this is the first time many of them had exposure to senior managers, to senior women. And it opened their eyes to the possibilities that they could be utilized in the job opportunities and financial services. You know, it wasn't just their view of Wall Street really gets expanded by participating. And maybe it makes them pay a little bit more attention, a math class as well. So while we were there, we would often get the question from them like, Well, why are you coming up here, why you are here to why you taking time? And my dad's My answer would be like, I'm willing to invest time now because I'm going to need your help in the future. And so I really want you to learn these skills. And volunteering was not without benefits for myself. You know, I learned a lot of classroom management techniques from our teaching partner. Active listening, rewarding good behavior, ensuring everyone was engaged. And when working on complex sales deals with an unruly group in a conference room. I would often kind of use the same skills. Close my eyes and think, this is the same thing that was happening when I left the classroom on Tuesday. And so I could I've benefited from those utilizing those kind of basic skills. And volunteering was both exhausting and exhilarating. And I'll always remember the two students who actually got the calm concept of compound interest. Because you see quite a smile on someone's face when they realized that the money they say is making money. Absolutely. And I didn't picture this Miles. I remember being in that classroom and it's just wonderful. Then thanks again for all the volunteer work that you do and the idea that it's, it's a win-win, right? You're invested in the volunteer effort, but you're also getting back from the volunteer. So and now and now do the million-dollar question or or the $2 million question or whatever it is. Right. Done it, sir. You're a retired senior vice president for Fidelity Investments and you are very young and so we all want to know, how did you do it, right? How were you able what did you do to be able to retire early? Well, I'm only going to share this with the people on this sim, that there is no secret to it. I mean, if you just listen to what my fellow panelists up talk about mary Andrew Ron. You just learned everything you need to now. So I'll equate it to secretes a millionaire. It's about planning. It's about choice. It's about understanding the decisions and the consequences that you're making. So I knew really early on that I was gonna do something else that, you know, in my twenties and thirties. I knew that, you know, in my fifties I was onto something else. And so I had a plan and I I had a plan for my first day at work. I paid myself first, meaning I took advantage of anything my company had to offer with the 401K match. I really paid attention to using in-network doctors to say to make sure I was getting the most benefit out of my my health plan. I used all the tools that the company afforded ME, commune or benefits, et cetera. And work didn't define me. I loved what I did, but I always had outside interests. And so that's where I like it really drove me to want to stick with the plan. And I did use a financial advisor. I didn't try to do everything myself. She happened to be my sisters, so it was pretty easy. And I just I never spent what I didn't have. I modified my needs, but I never felt deprived domain. I took a major trip every year. I just spent the time planning it. I make coffee at home. I took it with me on the subway. I drink coffee through a straw, so I didn't spell it on anyone. I brought my lunch, I eat with my colleagues, so I never felt like I was giving up anything. I was just very cognisant of what I wanted to do. And so there is no special sauce to it. It's, it's all about again, but all my panelists have said that, that it's being educated on how you can make a difference and your choices make a difference. So having a plan following the plan, making sure that the decisions are the right decisions. And you had that target of the fifties and you got there and you are now doing other things that don't that don't require a you've been in the office all day and working with clients. So congratulations on that. Before the before we went into the panel, Ron was telling us that he could teach us how to go back to work for Humphrey hitchhiker men, right? Because he retire and then I know that he was called bag to help the company that he's working with now. So, you know, sometimes you have plans and you follow that plan and and then you come back to the workshop. You summarized everything really well, so thank you very much for that. So we're going to move now to the questions and we have eight questions in here. The first one that I would like to ask is someone that is in the business community and is interested in helping people in the community when it comes to personal finance. And the question is, well, what would be the best age group to work with to have the most impact? So maybe I'll direct this. Want to marry sins. You know, you work with the little kids and also with, with adults and so on. So if they're going to volunteer their time, When do you thing or what group, age group do you think is the, the one that's going to generate the most reagan. So, so I'm going to be nebulous about this and say any age group. I think I think it's really important. I I agree with Andrew that width that we can't that having a volunteer go in and talk about something in and count on that person to teach everything kids need about personal finance. That doesn't work well. But I think kids need to see people who look like them, who have experience with had experiences like them, talk about those experiences. And so I'm just kinda one of the questions. Another question that was in here was about we have to teach all kids and some kids live in poverty. So they don't have the option to maybe save at this point in their lives. I think we need to be aware of those ideas. And so if you're volunteering and you have these experiences to share, whether you're sharing it with an eight-year-old at their level or a high-school students. Both of those students are going to benefit from hearing your experience. And I think we have to be cognates, cognizant of the fact that these kids have different experiences than we did. My own personal experience. My parents filed bankruptcy twice before I was 18 years old. So my experience with personal finance is going to be quite different than perhaps Andrews or donna. And so a teacher needs to have tools to reach all of those students. And I think seeking out people who reflect your students is valuable and staff. Thank you, Mary. And of course, if anybody wants to volunteer their time, they're more than welcome to contact the Center Director, decentered directly or the university dealing. We will be more than happy to help them make the connections. So there's a question here, and I know that we have to a view from the Federal Reserve Bank system. And then two of you who work in private industry. But are there any free courses you recommend for Alumni? Alumni, I imagined it means alumni of the university, but it could be for anyone about personal finance. And what about corporate finance? But let's focus on the personal finance. Any free courses that people can't, axes that you know off perhaps to your company's or perhaps through the federal reserve bank system. And I'm going to open this one up because I don't know who who has an answer here. So maybe you can raise your hand and then I'll say, okay, you can go at anybody free courses. Mary has an idea, good. Well, I'll just give a plug for. At a very basic level, we have econ login.org, which is a portal for people, mostly for educators. Where we have a lot of free resources on economic and financial topics. And we have resources from ten Federal Reserve banks and the Board of Governors, the FINRA Foundation in Planet Money. And you can go in there and register as an instructor and look at the material yourself. It's all free. And so you might find something in there that's of value to you. You can learn about the fact by watching videos from the Philadelphia Fed. You can learn about budgeting. You can learn about Gross Domestic Product, a variety of topics, and it's all free. So it might be a starting point. Yeah, I would echo that, that the St. Louis Fed resources are really excellent. And the other thing that's really valuable there's that they've all been imbedded by, by knowledgable economists, people that have experience in this field and as all available for free there, that's great. Also our colleagues at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas have the building wealth materials that, that's a free booklet that can be ordered. It's, it's kind of the basics and the starting point for a lot of people. And they also have that available online as well. I think one thing to be really careful about in this space is that there's a tremendous amount of material that's out there. And I see Mary nodding as well. And we know that not all of it is correct. So be really, really careful about what you're looking at and what the background is of that person. And try to go for things that are well vetted. One it means we have a lot of confidence in is that the materials that are produced by the Federal Reserve banks had been, been well bedded and we have an extensive process internally to make sure that everything's accurate. Thank you, Andrew, and I'm not sure we've done a run have but I do have one that I've been impressed with and this is a little bit separate from what we do at, What would you do in Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in St. Louis. But it is actually put together by Bank of America. It's called Better money habits. And that really impresses me about, about, is that first of all, the content is well done. It is all done with videos and I believe in partnership with the Khan Academy. So they know a little bit about online education. And they also have all of the videos in Spanish. And I think all of you can hear that I am not from here, I have an accent and I was born in Spain, but with 60 million Hispanics in the United States, it's just another way to provide navigation and reach out to a broader group. Individuals here in the United States or I like that one quite a bit. There's also a website, know know, know how to invest.com that also has valuable information. So there are a number of resources, but I think just like Andrew said, sometimes to men too much information out there and we need to be careful about what we select to use with, with students. So I have another question. How do we best use new fintech and social media technology to accelerate the rate at which we can spread financial literacy. So how did we use fintech and social media to simply accelerate that rate and reach more people. And I will put it out. Do any of you. Okay. Go ahead. Under so I have a I have a concern that may connect with this. And, and, and we've learned about it from keys to financial success, which is that we know in the research that the fast solutions are often not the best in this space, that there's the difference between using social media to build interest in personal financial education. But one of the big lessons from our work has been that the intensive classroom based learning has big knowledge gains. And so I worry that short interventions will push out the longer interventions. And we know that this is a complex space that requires more intensive learning. So whether that be keys to financial success or teachers assigning multiple modules in econ low-down dot org portal from the St. Louis Fed more is better. And I also feel strongly that classroom based learning where kids are held at the K12 level, responsible for understanding the knowledge that they're learning. That that's important. That it's not just cherry picking what you want to learn, that it's trying to learn and overall plan. One of the questions, Carlos, also they came up was about the fact that we do a lot of our research looking at knowledge base results for kids. But what about the behavioral aspects as well? And one of the things is doing this type of research and we do it at a very high level in terms of the intensity of our research, it's very difficult to be able to track kids, both from a legal perspective, as well as just the fact that they get lost over time to track them after, after school or after high school. But one of the things that as we're seeing more and more research emerge and our colleague at Montana State, Cardio urban is one of the people that's led in this space, is that kids that have been exposed to personal financial education high school, they have higher credit scores on average and lower, lower delinquency rates and credit accounts after they graduate. So this is some of the evidence that we're getting out now that's coming more and more into the research space. This shows that having the knowledge results than in behavioral changes that are in the positive direction we want them to be in. Good, I guess. I'm going to I mean, so I agree with you, Andrew, whole-heartedly about we have to be careful that we're not using social media as a substitute for really good classroom education. That said, I think there are ways to have kids use social media. So I've seen teachers who've taught a lesson and then said to their students, I want you to write a tweet that we can send out explaining x, so explaining compound interests. And for me, that's a tool that could have some value, right? First of all, it goes to their parents and their parents see what they're learning. But it also forces the child to think about, do I really understand this? How can I explain it in a short amount of time? So I think there's a way to use the tool in an educational space. It has value, but it does not substitute for teaching kids personal finance starting in kindergarten, building on it and having a capstone course, right? In the recent, in the recent example in the papers using Reddit and GameStop and this, these are very short term like these are very dangerous things for four adults, kids to think of investing as a gamification, right? So I applaud the fact that it has to be learned in the classroom. And unfortunately, anything that you saw in the papers were, didn't really explain the problems what happened with games doc and that was part of the business that I was in was all that. They talk about the deposits and why they had to shut it off. And it, it's kinda like the bowels of Wall Street, which people just don't understand. And so it's, it's critical to not think of investing as a game. And so having the kind of tools around budgeting and planning are much more critical and more difficult to get out of our social media. Absolutely. And I have one more question about taxes, but we're gonna do that to the end here, Ron, I was going to ask you, somebody said, well, what is a good time to start teaching students about taxes? And I would say as soon as possible, right? Because there are a couple things that are certain. What is taxes? And the other one is that eventually we won't be here, those background. It's just add real quickly that students learn really quickly about taxes when they get their first job and they get their paycheck and they say, wow, spike, and I remember my kids doing. It really guides ESU whom barry early. So getting a job RWE helps abso Leah, and the sooner that we get, the better my daughters do and also some work right now and she's looking at WE DO form. And there's some money that it's gone, so well, I told you you're going to have to pay a little bit in magazines. So and now we're going to file your taxes and you're gonna have to pay a little bit more to do that. So she's not all that happy, but, you know, we are coming to the end of our time. I want to thank all four of you and I'm going to turn it to Dean Weber in a second. But for taking time out of your busy schedules to meet with us, I know that there are pressing things right now. Donna, apparently there's a water leak that you need to go out then and B, yet decided to stay with us. Thank you for sharing wonderful information in a. I'm going to turn it over now to Dean, whoever. Hey, thank you, Carlos. I'm very happy to hear this panel session for blue hands coming back to educate blue heads of the future. And really to showcase what we do in our economic education and financial literacy programs. I really liked Mary's points about starting children early icon or over a conversation I had with my parents. And when they first explained the idea that if I had a bank account, there would be interests. I assumed it meant I had to be interested about the back to get that money. So I kept saying I'm very interested in banking. Can, can I kept mourning? Can I get more money back from the bank for that interests? But it struck me that, you know, they they drilled into me early from my little passbook savings account that there was a small interest amount. And I just assumed if I pretended I was interested in this than I'd even get more money. But I later learned was it's not that sort of interests. But at, but I think we all learned a lot and I think coming full circle to don as point about the GameStop and kind of what they're now calling swarm trading. That's really not how we're going to see people create good financial futures for themselves. And I sometimes think it's important for us, even when we do these stock investment competitions, to make sure that there's a communication of the risk that's at stake. You know, we sometimes Award the, the stock market game winner for generating the highest return. But it needs to be understood that that return came with some risk. And over the long haul, they need to be diversified and need to be able to be able to plan out for their future. So I appreciate what everyone else is, what everyone on the panel is shared with our participants. Hope you will all join us for our March, lifelong learner, webinar. And just like your plumbing Donna, my video doesn't seem to want to work, so I can say goodbye to you in person. But I really appreciated every buddies here am. So everybody's words today and appreciate your, your contributions to the future of Lerner College and are terrific programs in economic education and financial literacy. We'll see everyone again in Marks. Thank you to our panelists.

Lifelong Lerner Expert Webinar Series: Financial Literacy Feb. 18, 2021

From Kimberly Ragan February 18, 2021

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With recent global events threatening both our physical and financial health, the UD Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship’s (CEEE) vision is perhaps even more important than ever: to see students graduate as informed and productive citizens, contributing to their own prosperity and to the well-being of the world. Despite the pandemic, the CEEE conducted 143 programs, professional development sessions and courses during the 2020-2021 academic year, reaching 2,269 teachers within both public and private schools. As a result, the CEEE’s initiatives reached over 216,000 students.

The Lifelong Lerner Webinar Series, hosted by the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, will provide faculty and alumni from the Lerner College and the CEEE an opportunity to discuss the importance of teaching personal finance and economics early and consistently throughout a person’s life. What content should we be teaching children and young adults to prepare them to make sound financial and economic decisions? What financial literacy programs and courses are available to high school students and what does the research tell us about their effectiveness? Why is it important for professionals to volunteer their time to help others navigate the complex financial world we live in? What are the key concepts people in the workforce should know and how should they prepare for their retirement? These and other questions will be addressed by the panelists during this engaging, informational, and free to the public webinar.

•   Ron Bruehlman, BE82, EVP & CFO, IQVIA
•   Donna Fontana, BE85, Retired SVP, Fidelity Investments
•   Andrew Hill, BE96, 97M, 03PhD, Economic Education Officer Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
•   Mary C. Suiter, PhD, BE89M, Asst VP, and Economic Education Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

• Moderator: Carlos Asarta, PhD, Professor of Economics, Director - Center for Economic Education & Entrepreneurship

Department Name: Lerner College
Date Established: February 18, 2021
Appears In: Lerner College Lifelong Lerner Webinar Series

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