Eight Important Strategies Defining How to Teach Money Management
How to Teach Money Management is a question at the forefront of many concerned people’s minds these days. This page offers a variety of resources that define the strategies which will help those with a desire to teach money management realize their goals successfully.
The Impetus Behind Successfully Teaching Financial Education
1. Eight Outstanding Methods that Describe How to Teach Money Management
Below, we lay out eight methods to teach money management in a logical, well-defined process. Read the following case study that illustrates how the process works in real life.
Keith Erickson had a dream. Although he was perfectly happy in his career managing the tellers at Brightside Credit Union, he secretly wanted to learn “How to Teach Money Management.” The credit union was experiencing a high rate of absenteeism and turnover among the teller crew, and he believed personal finances were contributing to the problem. If he could only figure out how to teach money management effectively, he could help them and give Brightside a lift at the same time. Keith knew the tellers were mostly young adults with at least an Associate’s Degree, but he didn’t know much about how to teach money management.
2. What are the Target Learners’ Goals and Primary Needs?
Keith had a first vision – to give the tellers he managed an introduction to money management techniques. He talked with the HR Director and got her on board with the program. They opted to begin with a series of three 45-minute brown bag lunch-and-learn sessions during the tellers’ lunch hours. Because the time available was fairly short, Keith was fine with just presenting some basic information to get them started, but over time he hoped to help them achieve long-term financial wellness. His goal for the initial series was for the tellers to reach Level 2 on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, where they could recall the information and relate it to problem-solving.
3. How to Teach Money Management Step 2: Select Modes for Delivery
Keith understood his goals, both now and for the future. The next part of learning How to Teach Money Management was to choose delivery modes and pacing. For the lunch-and-learns, Keith knew the tellers were fairly well-educated but that they represented different demographics. He settled on informal live instruction for the delivery; and self-paced lessons based on the tellers’ needs.
4. Design Topic Coverage to Teach Money Management
Now Mr. Erickson faced the next phase on his journey to teach money management: selecting which topics to cover. Because the tellers were experiencing high rates of absenteeism, he thought they just needed some basic money management skills. He decided to focus each lunch-and-learn session on one of the following three subjects: financial psychology, budgeting/savings plans, and credit profile. Because Keith just had a short 45-minute time frame, he thought he could best meet his goal of getting them to Webb’s Level 2 by choosing content relevant to the tellers’ young adult life stage.
5. The Finding a Qualified Educator Phase of How to Teach Money Management
Then Keith was required to find an instructor who could relate to the audience and had both teaching skills and personal finance knowledge. Since Keith was interested in learning how to teach money management across the long run, he decided to get trained and qualified himself – so he signed up for the CFEI coursework at the NFEC.
6. Complex Thinking, Practical Nature: Selecting Resources
Keith needed to locate a high-quality curriculum next. He wanted lessons that would require complex thinking, but that had practical real-world applicability. He accomplished his objective by selecting a flexibly-designed package with just-in-time learning components specific to the real-life money management problems the tellers were facing.
7. What Else is Important to Successfully Teach Money Management? Measurement
From among the 16 tellers at Brightside Credit Union, all 16 (100%) attended at least one of the three lunch-and-learns. Keith tracked their absentee rates over time and found that, in the three months after the financial education sessions, the tellers’ absentee levels had improved by 18%. He created an infographic showing these data and sent it to his supervisor and the HR Director, to generate support for future money management education.
8. Keep the Momentum Going
Keith knew he wanted to keep going with his effort to teach money management to the tellers, so they could improve their situations and quality of life. After each of the lunch-and-learns he put a certificate of completion in each teller’s mailbox. Then he started posting weekly personal finance tips in the lunchroom to keep money management in the tellers’ front-of-mind awareness.