(1888PressRelease)
May 12, 2009 - The message of personal financial literacy is getting lost in all the “noise” of the economic crisis. Simple concepts such as monthly budgeting, understanding the actual costs of loans, review of free credit reports to monitor and help prevent ID Theft, retirement planning and simple savings allocation are not understood by young adult consumers and adult consumers.
Recent studies show that significant numbers of young adults do not understand the complex or at the very least, simple personal financial concepts that exist today.
The Council supports a more aggressive approach to teaching our young adults basic personal financial literacy concepts. “Young adults are now in the position to understand how poor financial planning has devastating effects on long term individual and family goals. College funds are being raided to pay mortgages and those students fortunate to have graduated from college have no jobs.”
“Young adults should appreciate the dilemma the Nation is now in; they are seeing Seniors Citizens who thought they could retire, now being forced to go back to work to pay for basic living expenses because of retirement account losses”.
“Now is the time to teach our young adults basic concepts in debt management, credit history management, budgeting and savings” says Russo. “Financial literacy courses should be required in High Schools to prepare students for the workplace or graduate studies. Education by osmosis is obviously not effective. Employers as well as lending institutions should institute a regular program to deal with personal financial literacy issues.”
“Now that we all finally recognize there is a serious recession, hopefully everyone will be open to changes in spending and savings habits. These concepts should be embraced not only Nationally, but Globally.”
About The National Council for Financial Literacy
The mission of the National Council for Financial Education of Students and Consumers is: to provide proactive, rather than reactive, financial education programs for students and consumers, through enhanced delivery strategies of financial content, with facilitators that are focused on topics that directly affect the ability of participants to function efficiently in basic daily financial situations.
The “Council” wishes to improve awareness of the pitfalls of poor money management and significantly improve the financial awareness in areas of daily financial stability, by concentrating on topics that concern basic daily financial survival. “Back to the Basics” of good money management.
More information about the National Council for Financial Literacy can be found at www.ConsumerFinancialFacts.org
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