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well financial literacy is receiving greater
attention these days as Educators look at new
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and innovative ways to improve the knowledge
especially for younger individuals as we move
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forward pleasure to be joined here in Studio
by David Musto professor of Finance here at
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the Warton school who is involved in a lot of
these areas right now David great to see you
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again thanks for your time nice to be back nice
to be back let's start with just I guess your
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general thoughts about where financial literacy
stands at the moment kind of in our culture what
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missing where we need to go moving forward
when you think about today's high school
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student which is what we're focusing on a lot we
could talk about that they haven't had a lot of
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opportunities to make financial decisions and
they haven't had to think to some extent about
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things that you and I had to think about a lot
when we were kids like inflation until recently
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right didn't even come up and yet they have
so many big financial decisions ahead of them
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not just student loans that Loom very soon in
their lives but also responsibility for their
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own retirement election uh campaigns that hinge
on financial issues that are hard to understand
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the demands on them to understand Finance are
greater than ever so maybe literacy might not
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be uh lower than it was 40 50 100 years ago uh
but the demands to to be Adept are much higher
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than they used to be and it seems like in in
many cases the resources to be able to provide
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that information are are not there as much as
they probably should be hopefully they will
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increase in the years ahead but still a ways to
go I've been involved in developing a financial
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literacy course for high school students and it
has been an education to see how little they've
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already seen and how little is already out there
so it's been a great opportunity for us to go in
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and and really be helpful and add some value
to their lives at a key moment too when when
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all these decisions are are just about to come
up in their lives so tell us about what the
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entails and and what how you've been able to
develop the relationships with a lot of these
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schools in order to provide this information okay
so the course that I'm talking about is Essentials
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of personal finance uh pen calls it Finance 2 and
that's important it's actually a Penn class these
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students are taking it 500 students are taking
this class right now at schools all around the
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country and they are getting pen course credit
they get a transcript from pen showing this course
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on it it covers the whole range of financial
issues that are relevant in their lives right
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now like if you are working at checkout at at
a store what's coming out of your paycheck and
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why what does that get you where's that going uh
and then student loans which are coming up for
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a lot of these students right away well how do
those work and and then also cover some topics
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that really are about being an educated voter so
when people say the Social Security trust fund is
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running out well what is that what exactly is
that it's not a stack of dollars somewhere that's
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running out but it but it does mean something and
it is running out soon so what does what does that
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mean and did different candidates say different
things about that well what do you like what what
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does that mean for you a lot of loow hanging fruit
there that we are going out there and providing
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and the kids not only get a chance to uh learn
this material they get pen course credit and I
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should add that what's really made this work for
us is a partnership between my Center the Steven
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Center our Global youth program that that reaches
out to high school students and a nonprofit in New
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York called The National Education Equity lab
which has a lot of that last mile Outreach to
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these Title One high schools around the country so
that teamwork between my the two centers here at
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Wharton and this uh New York nonprofit is what's
made this work so we have students thousands of
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miles away from each other uh taking the same
course now thank you for listening to the ripple
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effect we hope you found this episode informative
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