Transcriber: Phương Võ Reviewer: Emma Gon
I signed my first contract when I was six years old.
Every Sunday after church, my parents would give me an allowance.
It was 20 pesos or the equivalent of around $1 today.
And every time I got my allowance,
I would run to the nearest store arcade and spend every cent.
Until one day, I found something
that was more expensive than the 20 pesos I received.
It was a remote control car and it was calling my name.
I didn’t want to wait to buy it. I didn’t have the patience
to save enough money to buy it myself.
So I did the most sensible thing I could think of.
I went to my parents and asked them to buy it for me.
(Laughter)
Well, you see, my parents had a really interesting way
of teaching me things by adding little activities into my everyday life.
And at the time, they didn’t feel like more than a game.
But I was learning some very valuable lessons.
On this day, my parents decided that it was the perfect opportunity
to teach me about loans and credit,
and this is how they did that.
They sat me down and said, we will give you the money,
but before we can do that, here’s what you need to do.
Take this piece of paper, write down how much money you need,
why you need the money and that you will pay us back.
When you’re done, you’re going to bring it back
so that we can all sign it and this will be your contract.
As we were signing that piece of paper,
they were explaining how over the next few months,
instead of receiving 20 pesos, I was going to get 15 in my allowance.
This was my first lesson in financial literacy.
Since then, I have realized that, well,
I was fortunate enough to have seen these lessons at a very young age.
Not everyone gets those same opportunities.
Fast forward 20 years and I now work in making sure
that I expose young people to what it means to be a member of a community,
a business owner and a family provider.
Every single year, I see around 15,000
different young people from across the state.
Our staff take them through two different programs where they get to apply
and learn about micro and macro economic concepts.
They do it in a way where they get to interact in an experiential programming,
in a space where the students get to be an adult for a day.
Through those programs, I get to see firsthand the different opportunities
and exposure that they all get around, one common thing - financial literacy.
To give you an example of how different these worlds look to them.
When we teach students about paying bills, we start by asking one simple question.
What do people get in the mail?
Now, if you’re curious to know how wild a kid’s imagination is
or how different their perspectives about life is,
you sit around for when that question is answered.
They’ll say things like, what’s a bill?
Some see packages, of course, others see checks.
Sometimes, however, the answer is much more telling
on how different these two worlds really are.
One time we had a student say, people get foreclosure notices on their mail.
Society cares a lot about one thing today
that is sending their kids to school
to learn about math, science, social studies and some humanities.
What about real life stuff, though?
Like how a small piece of our heart breaks every time we have to pay taxes.
(Laughter)
Or how it is our responsibility to vote
and elected officials who can represent us.
How we have to care for each other and the spaces that we live in.
And how difficult it actually is to make everyday decisions.
And this time in age, it is important to expose our youth
to what it really means to work to have a job.
Now, I’m not saying send your kids to work.
It’s not what I’m saying here.
But I do believe that when we start to introduce these concepts
to them at an early age, it all becomes to feel very natural.
In one of our programs, we take students, a group of students that's 5 to 8,
and they get to learn what it feels like to run a business.
So they’ll apply for a business loan. They will enter employees into payroll.
They'll create a business plan, a marketing plan,
and they also sell products, try to make a profit.
Now through these programs,
they get to see firsthand what we see
when we wake up every single morning.
Now, I’m not saying that they’re going to remember everything they saw there.
But they will remember some of the activities
that led to their business being successful.
And they do it in the most natural way.
I want you to think about this.
When you wake up in the morning, you go to work, you make some money,
you come back home and you’re hopefully living the life you wished for.
You spend time with your family. You save money to go on trips, vacations.
You go watch a movie with a loved one and you pay bills.
What if you had zero idea of how any of that happened right now?
According to the S&P Global Financial Literacy Survey,
the rate of global financial literacy
for people ages 15 through 35 is around 30% .
And it comes as no surprise that wealthy individuals understand money issues
better than lower income individuals.
And with an increasing wealth gap in our society, we have a lot of work to do.
A lot of our students who come through our space,
they feel lost because they haven’t had anyone to explain to them
that a certain job leads to a certain income
and that then that income leads to a certain lifestyle.
After seeing thousands of students interacting in our space
I have come to one conclusion about life.
It is not scary when you’re faced with a new challenge,
it is only scary when you do not understand how to navigate it.
Our students need a little more help.
They need to understand how to connect the dots.
You can all play a very important role
in making sure that these young people understand
what their future lives can look like.
Instead of telling your kids to turn off the lights,
show them a bill for electricity,
show them what it actually costs.
Point out all of the community services around them.
That way they don’t have that small heart attack
every time they see taxes come off of their paychecks.
Each of us can be a catalyst for change.
All we have to do is share something good
or perhaps something difficult that we have faced in our lives.
My job is not to teach financial literacy to young people.
My job is to inspire all of the different groups that I come across.
You can do the exact same thing.
Do not be afraid to share.
(Applause)