What is a Financially Independent Student?
It has become painfully aware to me that the current generation of students has no idea what it means to be financially independent. What I am even more aware of is that for the mass majority of them, it is not their fault; it’s ours! It’s not because they have no desire to have money, save money, or understand the functionality of the ‘Almighty Dollar,’ it’s because they are living in a time of confusion, mass media, excessive debt, and a personal dose of entitlement.
More than ever, we need to get back to the basics. We need this generation to understand terms like savings, living within your means, retirement, compound interest, money management, enough, and fulfillment. Because of the current state of economy, our kids are hearing phrases like 700 billion bailout, trillion dollar deficit, government buying/bailing out industries, doom and gloom… Where’s the hope?
The hope is with us, individually and collectively. As parents it is our responsibility to teach our children what it means to have a ‘Personal Financial Philosophy.’ There is no right or wrong answer. What you find important might not be important to me and vice versa. What’s essential is that we teach the basic philosophy of spending less than what we earn. Saving, but not sacrificing what it means to live. Cherishing each day but still planning for the future. We need to build financially independent students.
I think it’s as easy to create a good habit as it is to create a bad one. Coming from someone that had to correct a few bad ones, learning how to be financially responsible and independent at an early age would have been fantastic. I hear lots of methods parents and teachers are using to give their children and students an opportunity to handle their own money and learn. From check registers to excel spreadsheets to classes to the old envelope system. Here’s a novel idea… Ask them!
Students are trying to make us understand that they want to be involved in the learning process. Traditional methods of teaching are neither engaging nor stimulating to them. They learn differently than we did. They have all of the access in the world at their fingertips; literally in the internet. We have learned to teach the students in the way they want to be taught. Not because we agree all of the time, because it’s effective and actually works. Take the lessons you want your children to learn and ask them how to best educate them.
Here are the seven fundamental points we start with at The Secure Student and believe are the vital first steps in teaching this generation of students to become financially independent:
- Setting a Vision – “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Napoleon Hill
- Develop a Plan – Hope is not a strategy
- Take Action – There are no right and wrong actions, only rights and lefts (lessons learned)
- Time is Money – The balance between today and tomorrow dollars
- Automation – Stop wasting time on things that can be done for you
- Credit Scoring 101 – How does credit scoring work, why is it important, and how do you master it
- Lifelong Learning & Adjusting – You never stop developing, progressing, and striving for improvement with your personal financial philosophy
I think we have one of the greatest opportunities in the world right now. By teaching this generation of students to create their own ‘Personal Financial Philosophy’ intertwined with positive habits and fundamentally sound money practices, together we can put our economy on solid ground.
