Sunday, April 20, 2014

$April is National Financial Education Month$

How do we learn how to handle money? Where to put it--bank, credit union or alternative financial services? How to pay bills? How to spend it? How to save and grow it?  If you're like most people, you learned the hard way, making mistakes and changing your behavior as needed. However, in order to highlight the need for financial education, the U.S. passed legislation designating April as National Financial Education Month (ok, it's actually called National Financial Literacy Month but I am one of many who feel that the word "literacy"has a negative ring to--who wants to be financially illiterate?). There are a ton of resources, both online and often in-person classes to learn how to handle money. In Maryland, there's the MD CASH Academy, a program of the MD CASH (Creating Assets, Savings and Hope) Campaign, where I am lucky enough to be their Director of Financial Education. The CASH Academy is a calendar and registration tool for the in-person, free, in-person classes which use fact based, non-biased curriculum. There is no selling of products and services. Community colleges often have non-credit classes and do most states' Extension Services. Some great online resources are:
Whichever website or class you go to, just be sure to find out how they are funded to do this work to ensure you are not getting advice/tips that are framed in a way to get you to buy a service or product.
Take a class, spend 10 mins a day on learning about managing your money, so you can tell your money where to go, versus it just going.........