Teaching Money Management Occurs in Eight Developmental Stages

Anyone with a desire for Teaching Money Management can discover what they need here. Following is a brief illustration that covers how each of the eight essential steps worked for someone else:

Linda Stevens, a financial professional, had a strong interest in Teaching Money Management to her clients. She knew her clients well, as she specialized in helping people who were approaching retirement age. But although Linda was well-versed in finances, she was inexperienced as a teacher. She reached out to her clients by phone, and found out many of them would be interested in attending a retirement planning seminar. She determined to offer a two-hour weekend seminar and invite all her near-retirement clients to join.

Linda’s initial thought was to bring a group of 25 clients together to discuss common questions and understand the steps required to put a retirement plan in place. Because the time she’d allotted was just a little, she was okay with just going over the basics of retirement planning and how to create a retirement plan. But across the long-term, Linda hoped to develop a retirement planning instruction series.

How best to pace the instruction? Linda considered next. And what delivery methods should I use? She wanted timeline-based pacing, because her clients were close to reaching retirement age. And because her clients were older and spread far apart geographically, she thought a webinar focused on teaching money skills would be an excellent way to bring them together.

Now Ms. Stevens was at the point where she needed to design the focus of her Teaching Money Management webinar by choosing appropriate topics. Since her clients had indicated a need for retirement resources, she homed in on retirement planning and investments for her primary emphasis.

Who would teach Linda’s webinar? Was the next question on the list. Linda had plenty of financial knowledge, but she lacked teaching experience. She needed an instructor with proven Teaching Money Management capabilities, in addition to strong relevant content knowledge. Her solution was to go through training herself to gain a credential as a Certified Financial Education Instructor. This certification would boost her credentials and build her résumé at the same time.  She also wanted to bring in a retirement speaker as a guest presenter for more advanced lessons.

The next question Linda needed to ask was, which money management lesson plans are best for Teaching Money Management? She wanted something that would be easily tailored to the webinar format, that could accommodate any schedule, and that aligned with personal finance and educational standards. She reached her objectives by choosing a curriculum supported by a design team and developed according to evidence-based learning principles.

Linda presented her webinar on a Saturday afternoon, and out of the 25 clients who had registered, 23 attended (92%). Everyone who signed in stayed for the entire program, and on a brief follow-up questionnaire, 20 of the participants (87%) said they had laid down the foundation of a retirement plan one week after the webinar. Linda designed a report summarizing these data and planned to use it to raise client awareness about the program.