Blogging Away Debt

Free Financial “Playbook for Life” for Teens

Following up on yesterday’s post about teaching teens about personal finance, here is a link to some free resources from The Hartford (an insurance and investment company):

Playbook for Life

The Hartford collaborated with the NCAA to produce a 36 page book that is geared towards teens and personal finance. How much information could they get into 36 pages? A LOT. There are sections about budgeting, interest, credit cards, evaluating job offers, insurance taxes, etc. I read through it and it is a great overview centered around a sports theme.

By itself, the Playbook would be a great resource for teens. What makes this Playbook even better is the accompanying 27 page Parent’s Guide that can be downloaded as well. The Parent’s Guide is full of tips on how to discuss personal finance with your son or daughter and even offers conversation starters. It reminded me of a teacher’s manual with how it followed what was in the Playbook.

Both books can be downloaded immediately or you can request multiple hard copies in the mail. Both methods are free. For further reading, there is even more information on the website that I linked to above.

While I was contacted by a representative of the Playbook for Life program to bring these books to my attention, I was in no way obligated to write about them. I think they are a great resource and they have the best price tag of all (free!). Kudos to The Hartford and the NCAA for providing them.

Personal Finance Version of “Scared Straight” for Teens

by Tricia

Jen sent me a link to a very interesting article from Boston.com. The Boston Bar Association and the District of Massachusetts US Bankruptcy Court are running a five-part program to help teens with personal finance issues. It comes complete with a scare tactic for the last lesson…the students sit in on a mock bankruptcy hearing.

Financial-literacy programs have sprung up in all 50 states, many of them launched by lawyers and bankruptcy judges who have had a firsthand glimpse of the social wreckage debt can cause. “Bankruptcy judges have realized in the past few years that there’s a gap in education, that many high schools aren’t teaching students about personal finance,” said Judge Feeney, who presided over the mock hearing. “We’ve decided to fill that gap.”
[Via Boston.com]

After reading the reactions from some of the students that were interviewed for the article, it sounds like the program is working. One student learned that credit card interest rates can rise as high as 25% when he thought it was only 5%. As of right now, 750 students have attended the program.

I don’t know about you, but if I was a teen and had to attend a bankruptcy hearing, I think that would have made me think twice about getting my first credit card in college. It also would have been beneficial to learn the other things that they covered in the first four sections of the program (budgeting, taxes, wants vs. needs). It would be interesting to follow up with the students they interviewed a few years from now to see how they are doing financially.

Thanks Jen for the link!