Contributor: A Personal Finance Club in a Kentucky High School
This week’s newsletter was written by John Sader. He interned at the Kentucky State Treasury in the summer of 2021.
My name is John Sader, and I am a junior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. This summer I am interning for Treasurer Ball, and I would like to take this opportunity to write about a passion of mine: financial literacy.
An understanding of investments and personal budgeting is vital to everyday life. With a good budgeting and investment strategy, life becomes much more manageable. Developing those strategies, however, can be difficult without good financial literacy education.
To help address this deficit, I started an investment and personal finance club at Dunbar open to all grade levels. Right off the bat, several of my friends joined the club; however, getting a sponsor to make the club official proved more difficult. Fortunately, my physics teacher stepped up and agreed to help.
Once we began advertising for the club, membership spiked. Our first official meeting began with almost 5 times as many people as the club previously had. A typical meeting starts off with an investment watch where we detail how our investments have been going and discuss options. When the stock market is performing well, this meeting is the best part of the day. It is so special to see so many smiling faces when all is going well; however, the real camaraderie is evident when the market is underperforming.
No matter how risky an investment someone made or how much they lost, our club is a true safe space for them. Whether someone wants advice on what to do next or just someone to comfort them, our group provides it. After everyone (who wants to) has shared their performance, we do an overview of the stock market and other instruments to help members with their next moves. Lastly, we pick a finance topic of the day and discuss it in detail, with one of the original members presenting on a topic to expand our personal finance knowledge. Usually, the topic will deal with budgeting, taxes, or some other fundamental subject.
Next year, we hope to expand to include more members. Additionally, we hope to bring in guest speakers to discuss their areas of expertise. I hope that my club can reach as many people at my school as possible and be a worthy addition to a more formal education. Promisingly, Kentucky has passed a financial literacy mandate at the high school level. I’m looking forward to seeing how the mandate helps students like me.
