Teaching Seniors to Think About Their Finances Now and Beyond

     When I was working with one of my intervention students last year, we had a conversation about why we don't teach students in school what they really need before living in the world.  He said that we teach higher levels of math and english, but we don't really teach them how to manage their life so they can be successful in whatever they do. They have skills to elevate their work life, but what happens when they bounce checks, get foreclosed on their mortgage, have unbearable credit card debt and find themselves working until they are 75 years old with no money saved.
     This year I will be teaching a Career and Financial Exploration course.  I wrote about students finding their passion and researching and developing a TED Talk about how they will explore their passion in their life in my last post.  Using this piece of the puzzle will be a tool that we will use to build a financial and career exploration from.  I want students to engage in researching and understanding the careers that students can pursue based on their passion.  I think that giving students that base will lead to legitimate conversation on realistic expectations for salaries for the careers that students will be pursuing.  Students need to research salaries in the area they believe they will live and not the national average for a career that has a large hub in another part f the country.  Say a student is looking at computer programming in Detroit, will the salary expectations be the same if they were living in Silicon Valley?
     My students need to look at things like college or trade school.  Does everyone really need to go to college?  There are many trade school jobs that offer higher salaries than some of the "college" jobs that students may pursue.  With that, students need to look at the cost of education and the potential earnings for the career they are looking at pursuing.  If a student spends $200,000 on a college education and finance most of that tuition, should they be honestly looking at a career that will pay $40,000 a year?  How long will it take to pay off those loans.  Would it be a better choice to take courses at a community college and then transferring to a 4 year college than going off to a 4 year college and ringing up debt.
     We will be bringing in Financial planners, mortgage brokers, car loan officers, professionals in students areas of interest, college reps, etc.  to give students contacts and experience with areas of the world that they will need to understand.  If students know what is expected from them when they go in to get a car loan and they have talked with someone in that role, they should be more comfortable when it is time to buy a car.  That goes for the other types of professionals we will bring in.to our class.
     I hope that students will have a better understanding of navigating the world around them and making future impacting decisions with am educated background.  Having students make decisions in their lives based on experience and not based on what they read in a pamphlet, what their friends are doing or what their parents have been pushing will make the preparation for this year worth while!