HERMON, Maine — Hermon High School personal finance students hosted a "Teen Teach-in" class on Tuesday at Patricia Duran Elementary School, showing fourth grade students smart ways to save, spend, and borrow money.
The teen teach-in is part of the nonprofit Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy's nationwide campaign to teach teens and younger children about financial literacy. The coalition supports personal finance educators across the county, and it partners with state affiliates.
"They want to know about money, and they want to know how to get it," Laura Levine, president and CEO of the organization, said while explaining how interested teens are in learning about financial literacy. "The want to know how to make it, how to grow it, what to do with it."
Levine said the organization was founded in 1995, a time when she said 18 to 25-year-olds were the fastest growing cohorts of bankruptcy filers due to poor credit card management.
Maine Jump$tart is an independent affiliate of the national Jump$tart coalition. This year, Maine won the state coalition of the year award. Hermon High School personal finance teacher Margie Deabay won the personal finance educator of the year award for her outstanding work with her students.
Deabay said she believes it's never too early to learn about financial literacy. Hermon High School student Saige Lang said she's learning skills that will stick with her all throughout her adult life.
"I love that this class is actually something that I'm going to be able to take with me," Lang said. "It's not just another math class or another social studies class that is just going to be a waste of my time."
Although the teach-in lasted just short of an hour, fourth graders like Isla Zakrzewski said she understands the importance of learning how money works, explaining that during the teach-in, she learned how banks use money accrued by interest rates from loans to make money.
"I learned that when you're older you have to learn how to spend your money and what to do with it," Zakrzewski said.
Lang was happy to share her knowledge with children. She said she recently used skills that she learned in her personal finance class to purchase her first car, agreeing to a car loan with a low interest rate.
Lang said wealth is glamorized on online, adding that social media influencers place pressure on teens and young adults to reach steep financial wealth goals at young ages, but skills that she is learning in personal finance help her filter through those pressures.
"I see a lot of things on social media with influencers posting videos. That's how they make their money," Levine said. "That's not very true in the real world I feel like. A lot of people need jobs like working at credit unions, grocery stores... stuff like that."
Like Lang, Deabay said the benefits of learning about financial literacy early on are clear.
"I had one student tell me it was the most important class he ever had," she said. "A lot of people, you know, they swipe plastic. So, it's a lot easier for people to spend money and get in debt when they just swipe plastic. So, I try to impress on the kids that plastic is cash and money, and you're still spending it."
Only 19 states in the U.S. require high school students to take a standalone personal finance course to graduate. The course is not a curriculum requirement for all students in Maine, but the course at Hermon High School has been a requirement for students to graduate for at least three years.
"Kids get into debt," Deabay said. "They build up credit card debt and are struggling to pay off one credit card or the other and not having a handle on their finances."
All though the course is not a requirement for all students in Maine, Deabay said she believes it should be.
"It's so exciting to know that you're giving them skills that they're going to use for the rest of their lives," she said.