What’s Right With Our Schools: Dade County Lessons in Finance
TRENTON, GA (WDEF) – High School is the perfect place to get young people ready for college or career, but even after you land a good job, properly managing your money makes all the difference. Dade County students are learning lessons that will really pay off.
Al Barton is an advisor at Dade County High.
He explains, ” Our main purpose of being here is to get our students work ready, and so, what we’re trying for is to make sure that our student body has the best opportunity they have not to just survive out in the world, but thrive.”
Barton continues, ” It was difficult for me, and my colleagues are the same way. And so, what we’re doing is we’re giving everything we can to get our students out there. Our students are seeing this is a real thing. And so, it helps motivate them with education. It helps them think about, what do I want to be when I grow up?”
Sophomore Addison Higdon says, ” Today we learned about the credit union and the different types of marketing. And it’s really helpful because when life, like, with a business, you have to know how to invest and how much supply and demand you have and everything that you need.”
Freshman Eli Ryan chips in, ” We also learned how to like even (with) an advertisement, you don’t have to sell something as long as it looks friendly. You create brand recognition for your business later on. That way, you have recurring customers.”
Jake Cash is a communications engagement liaison with TVCU.
Jake says, ” Got to send some people to Dade County High School today just to talk a little bit about what we do in our careers and talk a little bit about personal finance, instilling good financial principles into kids young when they’re in high school. And around that age is so important, just because building those practices early helps you for the rest of your life. It gives your money more time to grow in the investments that you make when you’re early. And credit is big, too. Establishing credit early, developing good practices to keep your credit good, is something that can help you throughout the rest of your life and help you avoid a lot of pain and difficulty that you might have if you didn’t start early.”
Al Barton concludes, ” Sometimes if you don’t tell them, it’s math, it’s better that they can see that. With that said, they can use that concept for the rest of their life. And so, it’s easy once it’s in their head. You can write stuff down all day long, but they’ve got to be able to use it.”
