NGPF Podcast

Thanks to "The Budgetnista" Tiffany Aliche for joining the NGPF podcast recently. Tiffany shares her personal story, including how a request for a bike on her twelfth birthday led to a great lesson from her father about budgeting and what she learned from her initial foray to invest her savings. Full of practical advice about how to use mental accounting and behavioral nudges to encourage saving, you will walk away with ideas from this podcast that you can implement in your life. Enjoy! For more details: http://nextgenpersonalfinance.org/ngpf-podcast-tim-talks-budgetnista-tiffany-aliche/

A big thank you to Eileen Heisman, President and CEO of the National Philanthropic Trust (NPT), for the great conversation we had recently on the podcast. Eileen heads one of the largest grant-making organizations in the United States and is a perennial pick on those “most influential” lists you see in the world of philanthropy. Eileen’s perspectives on charitable giving are informed from her decades of service as an educator, non-profit board member, entrepreneur and leader of the 6th largest donor-advised fund in the United States. She shares insights on how educators might structure an activity to teach students about charitable giving and also has some great tips on what to look for in vetting a non-profit organization. I also enjoyed the examples she gave of the most inspiring gifts that she has seen. We hope to pair this podcast with a lesson/activity in philanthropy (late Fall release) to provide students with examples of how money can be used as a tool to improve society.

Credit cards reign as one of the most ubiquitous financial products for consumers. Yet, they are often still not well understand by cardholders and non-cardholders alike. To bring some clarity to the credit card world, I was fortunate to have Nerd Wallet's credit card guru, Sean McQuay, join me on this NGPF podcast to help answer such questions as: . Why are those 0% APR offers so prevalent? . Why can't you find out the interest rate on your new credit card until it arrives in the mail? . What credit card has the best awards program? . What's a secured credit card and how can it help a young person establish a credit history? I know that you enjoy this entertaining conversation with Sean!

The FINRA Investors Education Foundation is out with the results of their 2015 National Financial Capability Study and who better to discuss the results than Gary Mottola, the head of research at the foundation. In this podcast, Gary supplies key insights from this comprehensive study including details on how millenials (and others) are managing their budgets, checking accounts, credit cards and student loan balances. He describes the quiz questions (test your knowledge here) from the study, including the question that survey participants had the most difficulty answering. Finally, he shares some surprising results about the prevalence of formal financial education programs and the impact of parental (or guardian) influences on financial knowledge. Enjoy!

Veronica Dangerfield has dedicated her life to bringing financial literacy workshops to underserved communities through her work at Patelco Credit Union in northern California. Her workshops educate foster, low-income and other high-risk youth as well as young mothers on the basics of personal finance. Visa recognized her work as an Innovative Educator and described her approach in this way: "Using her background as a comedian to connect with the clients of Brighter Beginnings, Dangerfield jumps right in to help those who are attending the program's financial literacy workshops get comfortable talking about a difficult topic. "Because of lack of banking knowledge and bad experiences, people feel shame when talking about their personal finances," says Dangerfield, who also works at Patelco Credit Union as Marketing Manager and a financial literacy educator and mentor. "Money problems breed hopelessness. In my workshops, the main goal is to make people feel validated, regardless of their financial pasts. The key is to make it relevant, memorable and fun." Her passion and enthusiasm to serve others comes across frequently during our wide-ranging conversation which includes her take on how to make personal finance engaging for young people, the importance of bringing happiness (spoiler alert: think birthday cakes) to a emotion-laden topic like money and how she stays current in the field. Enjoy!

Thanks to LaTisha Styles for joining the NGPF podcast. We had a great conversation about a variety of topics from the highs and lows of her entrepreneurial journey as founder of Young Finances to providing ideas (and resources) on how to explain taxes and investing to young people. Listen to this podcast to hear about LaTisha's educational pivot and how her college experiences can be instructive about factors for your students to consider when selecting a college major. She provides excellent tips to educators, including the importance of storytelling to engage students. Finally, as founder of Young Finances, her success can serve as an inspiration to young women who might have the desire in the future to pursue the entrepreneurial path. Enjoy!

Thanks to Mike Finley for joining the NGPF podcast to discuss his simple approach to investing. For so many educators, investing is their most challenging topic to cover in the personal finance curriculum. With so many investment options, so many talking heads with such varying advice and so much jargon, it is no surprise that so many struggle with this topic. And yet, like so many things in life, sometimes the simplest approach is the best one. Mike shares the investing wisdom he has gained from his thirty years as an avid reader of all things investment-related, as an investor, an educator and author. You will walk away with some new ideas on how to simplify your investing lessons (and perhaps your own investing strategy too!). Enjoy!

Thanks to Bilal Zia for sharing his global perspectives on financial literacy and financial capability that he has gleaned from his field studies in countries such as Indonesia, India, Brazil and South Africa. Bilal is not afraid to tackle the difficult questions facing the field including how to translate financial knowledge into behavioral change and whether financial education works. He shares some surprising insights gleaned from his study of Brazilian high school students, as well as an innovative approach to infuse financial concepts into popular TV programming in South Africa. Not only will you enjoy our conversation but you will also get a few ideas that you can use in your classroom or home.

I had a great conversation recently with Terry Odean, the Rudd Family Foundation Professor of Finance at the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley. You will walk away with some great ideas not only how to teach investing but also how you can be a better investor. Terry shares his "big break" that came from his dogged persistence to get access to a researcher's crown jewels: brokerage account records for tens of thousands of individual investors. This data set would serve as the source for many of his research papers which provide critical insights on actual investor behavior. Terry also describes how his mentor, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, influenced the arc of his career and his research interests. Here are a few of the other questions that Terry tackles: . What are the biggest mistakes that individual investors make? . What is your take on stock market games played in high schools throughout the country? . What are the three core concepts that should be in every investing unit?

Thank you to Nancy Labricciosa and Amanda Volz for joining me in conversation on this NGPF podcast. We honored both Nancy and Amanda recently as Teacher-Innovators (see NGPF press release) based on the projects they submitted for our annual contest. Amanda shares details about her Retirement Investing Project and the hooks she uses to get high school students interested in investing for future goals. Amanda discusses how she uses a "Shark Tank" format in her Company Competition project. This project provides students with a template to evaluate investing in publicly held companies and hones their communication skills as they make a persuasive argument as to why their company is better than their competition (think Coke vs. Pepsi). I know that you will enjoy hearing from these innovative teachers!