The Epidemic of Financial Illiteracy with Vince Shorb
What do we get wrong about how personal finance is taught? This episode features a conversation with Vince Shorb, CEO of the National Financial Educators Council. In this wide-ranging conversation we discuss the problems many K-12 educators face in developing a quality personal finance program at all grade levels and Vince shares his ideas for improving outcomes and implementing serious reform initiatives.
Links from our discussion
National Financial Educator’s Council website
Beth Kobliner “Money Habits Are Set by Age 7” PBS special mentioned by Vince
Transcript
Scott Lee: Greetings friends and colleagues, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, the professional educator’s thought partner-a service of Oncourse Education Solutions and SEL Resource. I am Scott Lee. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and education organizations please visit our website: www.oncoursesolutions.net and reach out.
Our guest today is Vince Shorb. Vince started his career in the financial services industry and as he will tell us shortly, that led him to advocate for financial education in K-12 schools. As a financial professional, he became increasingly aware of that many people were having to make life altering financial decisions, sometimes even before graduating high school, without learning the necessary skills and understanding to make these complex decisions well. This led him to establish the National Financial Educator’s Council to promote quality financial education and broader education reform initiatives. He is currently CEO of the NFEC.
Welcome Vince to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Vince Shorb: Great to be here.
Scott Lee: So, first off, your professional background is not as a teacher. So why did you become such an advocate, for financial literacy?
Vince Shorb: It's interesting. When we were talking before the show, I was thinking about that and I realized I was a teacher early on in life just in a different sense. So, I had some young success with purchasing property and starting some businesses. I was always reading about investing personal finance in high school. And when I was 19, I bought my first piece of property. And the thing I love most during that time was my friends, my parents, friends, other people asking me and asking for help and asking me to explain things.
I really enjoy that. I like that quite a bit. It actually motivated me to get into financial services. I found that financial services, the way I handled that was very educational. I would have to spend a lot of time teaching people about the basics of my last decade was in mortgages, spending a lot of time teaching them about the basics of financing and just simple questions.
You think a lot of people would know, which they didn't. And so, I took that extra time, but I enjoyed that part of it. process. And I realized in a conversation with my mom back in 2005, 2004, I was looking for something else. I felt like I was putting a band-aid on people's finances and I really wanted to help them.
And she said, “you know, back when you were in high school, you always talked about how you wish they taught money in high school. And that might be an opportunity.” And from that point on, I moved forward. I founded the National Financial Educators Council in 2006. And I started by boots on the ground, going out there and teaching groups, right?
And I realized very quickly, one of my first classes was a, with the juvenile hall system at a local at Orange County. And I realized very quickly, I lacked a lot of the skill sets needed to teach effectively to groups, right? I saw eyes rolling, people not paying attention. And from that point on, I really wanted to improve my teaching ability.
So, I started to study a lot, brought in consultants. I brought in people that in, in, in shadowed people that were teachers. So, I learned a lot about education methodologies and that's really been the foundation of our business ever since is really how do we bring financial education, which is traditionally just been offered in a lecture format, right?
Somebody speaks at you for 60 minutes and they're gone, into a new age where we're considering. Research and how, how to improve people's learning abilities and that's led us to our accreditation. We've been accredited for three years to the IACET. One of the only ones, I don't know any other organization in financial education, that's an accredited organization.
And that's been just a driving force for us. And, and I found it a very enjoyable process going through that. And it's really helped me develop a love for teaching and a love for relaying information in a way that helps people take action on what they've learned.
Scott Lee: Yeah, it's, it's interesting, I think about one time an insurance salesman came in and talked to me straight for an hour and it's like, I, I just, I don't know that I still need this and trying to find ways to hook kids or, and even adults using a lecture about it is not gonna be the best way.
Vince Shorb: You know, you can have all the content knowledge you want, and I was, you know, had a lot of content knowledge, but I was talking way over their heads, and also I wanted to give them a lot of information, right?
Early on, I found one of my biggest mistakes was I knew what they needed, right? And I still know what they need, but I have to scale back and reduce the topic so I can increase the, the higher order thinking skill sets, getting them to, you know, analyze, create as opposed to just, you know, giving them a lot of information on a lot of random topics where it feels like overwhelmed for them.
Scott Lee: Yeah. And, and you've, mentioned and you've said, in other places that financial illiteracy; say that again, financial illiteracy is an epidemic. Can you tell, tell us more why you say that and, and what that means to you.
Vince Shorb: Yeah. When, when I look at, if we look at the data first and I'll share some personal stories, but when I look at the data first, we see two thirds of the country in a bad position, right? They're either financially coping, which means they're keeping their head above water, but they're one or two moves away from being in serious problems. And you have about a good portion of people that are in really financial despair where they may need third party support or other things to, to, make ends meet, right?
And they're not making ends meet. They need to add a support to do so, so when we look at that, and especially in America, we have so much opportunity here all the data points, it's really sad. And, and just from a personal perspective, when I was early on in the career, when I was, founded this company and in my mortgage days, I would work with people one on one. And I saw what they look like from the outside, right? I would see, “Hey, they have a nice car. Hey, they have a nice home. Well, they might have a second home, right?”
I saw these things, but then when I peel back a few layers, I was worried for them. Right. First I'm like, “Oh, this is going to be great. Easy client. It looks like they're doing well. I just can refine a few things for them. Put them in a better position.”
But then when you peel back one, two, three layers, like, wow, okay, we need to really do some work here, so I found that what they appear on the outside isn't always what their finances is, is, and I also saw firsthand how this impacted all areas of their life.
So, the epidemic isn't just on their wallet or first book or bank account. It's on their relationships. Oftentimes we see one of the biggest causes of divorce, stress, inability, sleep, unhealthy coping, right? All of these things are part of a root cause, which is personal finances. So yeah, that's why I feel it's a really, I think it's the cause of our time with, with elevating people so they can make qualified financial decisions and are just working more towards better financial health and wellness.
Scott Lee: Yeah, it's like a, friend of mine one time said, about finances, he's like, “you know, you can really tell,” and he was talking about couples, “how they look at money tells you a whole lot about their beliefs. core beliefs.” So, let's talk a little bit more specifically about, schools in particular.
And I want to put high school, kind of on the back burner and come back to that. And I want to start with elementary schools. You have said in the past and your organization also advocates for financial literacy in elementary and middle school. So why elementary school? And what could an elementary teacher do?
Vince Shorb: Yeah, great question. And it's so important for people to understand that financial habits form very young, a lot of data points out there. One of my favorites is from Brown university. They interviewed over 50, 000 families and it showed work ethic habit and chore habit formed by age nine.
Beth Koblinger on a PBS special, show data that, financial habits are starting to form by age seven. And when you look at why, right, well, if we zoom out from that, well, we see advertisers marketing very heavily to kids at a very young age with very sophisticated ads. We see social influencers.
They're not sharing the nights or eating tuna from a can and top ramen. They're sharing the nice nights out, the travel, those things. We look at celebrity culture, right? And a lot of that is people feel in behavioral finance shows. We feel we deserve what others have. So, this whole concept of keeping up with the Joneses back in my day has expanded internationally.
And then all that influences their peers. And, and so these kids are getting this information inundated to them all the time and really building out consumers. Right. So, with, elementary school it's critical time to combat that. And I think with, the number one strategy I would say for elementary school teachers is to get the parents involved, because if we think about all those other factors there, and I'll give some in classroom tips as well, but if we look at all those factors.
Oftentimes parents will help to mold those negative behaviors. For instance, I saw this a few years back, a mom at a store, one kid in the cart, four or five year old, a young lady next to her that wanted some fairy princess thing filled with candy, a Disney thing, and, uh, you know, said, “Mom, I want this, I want this,” and it escalated, right?
Over a course of two, three minutes, she went from this nice sweet girl to this beast. And the mom, she was, I felt bad for the mom. She didn't want to be embarrassed. And it was like, okay, she gave in. Right. And I was thinking about that. It's like, “well, she just reinforced a very negative behavior.”
And if that continues, what's going to happen when that young lady's 20, 25, 30, it can still grow. And once habits form, right, once they're molded, it's hard to modify habits. So I think parental involvement is key early getting parents to get the kids do chores and work and put effort into earning money, having them spend their own money if they want to buy things at stores as opposed to parents buying it and even having them contribute to household bills, right?
I think all those things are really important. We could start young and it's fun to do. And as far as in classroom, you know, I think elementary school is a critical time for numeracy and literacy, right? And that's kind of a key thing that they're trying to do in in classrooms already. So, it's easy to integrate personal finance in there instead of you know, a basic math lesson.
Maybe we put a dollar sign on there instead of having them write an article on some topic, maybe it's something to do with money. And there's ways we can integrate there. And I think it's a great time to help them understand the basics. Again, I think the parents are going to be much more in a position where they can mold those positive behaviors, but at least in schools, we can share with them some.
Basic information. I spoke with… she, she runs the cafeteria at a, for a district up in the Massachusetts, right? And one of the things they had these elementary school students do is come in and price out the, the various meals that they're eating. So as part math part, financial literacy, but anything we could do could make it interactive. I think is good. We've seen some classes do moving budgets where they're moving kids around the room toe to understand budgets and understand what cost of things are out there, they don't need to know the specifics, but they need to know. Hey, we're paying for house and shelter and we're paying for food and helping them understand the basics.
And when we shift to middle school, I still think it's critical for parental involvement, but I think middle school is a time. It's, it's it varies quite a bit. You know, we see big differences and literacy numeracy rates of students across the country. So, middle school may be different depending on where you're at, but with that, I think career exploration is really a neat thing to do because they're starting to come into their own.
They're starting to understand things. Yes, we get deeper on the financial piece, we can do more project-based learning on things that they may be excited about coming up in the future. Maybe he'll high school and maybe, school events or whatever that is that maybe, maybe they're into sports.
Maybe they want to do a project-based learning on the cost of, of attending football games and how that works with a budget. Or maybe they're thinking about the prom or whatever it may be, you know, letting the, giving the kids some freedom to learn about money.
In in ways that that they're relating “hey, I need money for certain areas of my life,” but I do think career exploration during that time is very, very critical. When we look at the number of youth that switch majors in college, the dropout rate, which is about a 3rd of people that enter college dropout. When we look at the number of students that graduate college and don't in a decade later, don't use a degree.
They don't, they're in a job. They don't require a degree. I think that's really indicates that the failure to do a lot of career planning early on. And just looking at myself, I, I was kind of like all over the place, right. And in college, it was a waste of a few years. I was like, “okay, well.” Wouldn't that have been better before?
And maybe I didn't need college. I didn't need college. It's kind of a waste for me. I did not need it. But I took a lot of classes. I enjoyed that. Didn't count toward my graduation, but it would have been good for me to know that beforehand, as opposed to when I was in college and spending money and accumulating debt. So yeah, with those younger grades, it could be a lot of fun. And I think it's easy to integrate into the core subjects, because again, it's focused on numeracy and literacy.
Scott Lee: Yeah. And I, I just think about your example of a sports team in middle school. I mean, as a coach, as a baseball coach, not just being the history teacher as a baseball coach, there were a lot of things that, that I could have done with my baseball team, just the students. A lot of people don't realize. How much money sports teams cost schools. If you're lucky as a coach in high school, maybe your basketball team makes money, but that's about the only sport that will actually pay for itself.
And where does it go? There's, there's a lot of other things I can, my mind is racing.
Vince Shorb: Oh yeah. No, I do brought up a thing. I saw these kids doing a carwash before I forget it was football or something down here. Give me money. I didn't really get my car washed, but “Hey, good job guys you know, here, here you go.” And it's kind of neat to see. It's like, they're putting an effort to raise money for what they were doing. And I think it's a good thing. And if, if, if, you know, the coach maybe sits down and says, “hey,” And it doesn't just have to be English math, and those types of, it could be coaches.
It could be, the, the career council, whomever it can be, but. There's opportunity. “Here's how much the the bats cost us, right? Here's how much these balls cost us. You guys lose a lot.” You know, this is, this is because of it, you know, and going through those numbers, I think it just helps kids realize the cost of things.
One of the events we used to do for high school students early on was an experience where they move around to these different booths and there's 14 different booths. They're selecting different things, car, places to rent, food, groceries. And we'd always put the car and those things, those, those, sneak items up front.
And by the time they get to the end, they're like, I don't have any money, but they're so excited when they, we gave them a $45, 000 salary. They're like, “Oh, this is great. I'm going to get that nice car and so forth.” And then at the end, one of the biggest comments we always got is “I can't believe it costs as much. I know my parents are doing this. I can't believe this is what they're doing.”
And so I think there was a healthy respect that developed for what their parents were contributing to that family. After the kids were done.
Scott Lee: Yeah. So, back to high school now and more about high school. And the reason that I, I bring up high school and we'll talk a little bit more about this later is I, I used to be a high school economics teacher. And, in Tennessee, I was certified to teach, personal finance and never taught that particular class, mainly because when I was an active classroom teacher, neither Tennessee or Georgia where I was working required personal finance as a class like they do now, but now about two thirds of states require usually a one semester high school class in personal finance or financial literacy. I'm guessing though that even if all 50 states required that, that wouldn't be enough. Am I right? And, and why? And you've kind of hinted at it already.
Vince Shorb: Yeah, it's, it's interesting. They, they treat personal finance like it's just some random topic.
We've reviewed all state standards, right? And, and you're right on the mark with the, the data there in most states, we said no state would even meet minimum education standards of any other subject. Every student that graduates from every state will not be prepared for even the near-term financial challenges.
We see some common things over and over. Not enough time, not enough rigor when I'm reading through standards of other states. That's all identify define and you're gonna hear that 50 times, they don't have them creating plans creating budgets So they're focused on low order thinking skill sets. The, the time involved is enough.
They just reviewed a state that had 70 different topics outlined for 50 instructional hours. How are you going to cover that? Right. And they don't train teachers oftentimes. So, most teachers they've gone to, let's say you're a math teacher. You went to elementary school learning math. You went to high school learning math.
You went to college learning math. Now you've been instructing math. Now they're like, “Hey, math teacher, you've got to teach personal finance.” Okay. “But I don't know how to, I don't have the materials.” So, they don't train the teachers. Those that do, it's like a two-hour crash course. Okay. On content knowledge only with personal finance, there's behaviors, emotions, there's habits.
It's not like math one plus one always equals two with personal finance. Every kid has a different socioeconomic status. Every kid has different goals, dreams, habits, behaviors. So, it's challenging. Most states don't have funding. Most states they're not purchasing curriculum. They're saying teachers go find free curriculum online.
So, I don't even consider them because it's more like a because it does not meet standards. And I started I'm a more positive guy and I started reviewing all these states and doing videos on that And I thought it would be kind of a balance. Hey that they can work on this, but they can they can improve this here but it's turned to be so one sided.
I sound so negative on those things. It's bad, but my end goal is a making sure that kids are graduating prepared to meet near term financial challenges when all those credit cards floods into them when they turn 18 in the mail, I want them to know what to do when they when they say, “I'm going to move out of my own.”
I want them to have the ability to do so when they graduate. I want them to have a resume and how to learn how to communicate and shake a hand. Prepare to be prepared for interview. These are just basic things. We need life and I think school is a prime time to be able to teach that and I think it's a subject matter that benefits 100 percent of students.
There's no student that will not need to know about money Even if they're independently wealthy trust fund, baby, they're going to have to manage that at some point so Yeah, I think it's, it should be in schools and I think high schools, the last opportunity we have to really support them before they learn through the school of hard knocks where most people learn, you make a mistake.
“Dang, now I got to recover in, in,” Making mistakes when it comes to money. It's not just, “Oh, I made this mistake. Okay, I'll fix it. I'm better now.” You make a credit mistake you have five to seven years make a debt mistake with college. I know people that are senior citizens still paying off college debt. You make a mistake with any basic thing out there in finances.
There's longer term consequences that can haunt them well into the future. So my big thing and the company's thing is, hey, we want to elevate standards, to make sure that, that it meets minimum education standards and that kids are prepared for those challenges proactively where they're learning in a safe, secure environment.
Scott Lee: Yeah, well said. And, we'll, have a link, to the standards on our website as well. So that teachers, listeners can look, specifically what you're advocating. What a classroom should look like. And I think, it may be, very interesting for a lot of people when they see the level of rigor that you all are advocating for.
Vince Shorb: and I was I was used this analogy and I had a funny story here a few months back. Trice be in the in the average classroom. If we average all the states that require financial literacy, it's under 30 hours of education toward personal finance of financial literacy. From the states that require it, it's under 30 hours.
And I always say to people, try speaking a foreign language after 30 hours, right? I took two years of Spanish, I worked in construction, I grew up in Southern California, have a lot of friends I practiced Spanish with, but I'm a little rusty, right? So, when I go to places, I try to practice, converse in Spanish, just to remember some things.
But I went to this meat market across the street, and everybody speaks Spanish there, and I ordered, I thought, five pounds of carne asada and I ordered 15 pounds and he comes out with two big bags. And I'm like, well, what's this? You know, and then I, I mixed up words and now I had 15 pounds of meat there, but, didn't go to waste.
We have learning losses that, that it can be very steep with subjects that we're not utilizing. And I think with personal finance, we have a really unique opportunity because they can apply what they're learning in the near term. If we're doing, some other subjects, if they're not utilizing it within a year, they forget a lot of what they were taught.
But with personal finance, if we get them in the course to, create plans to create calendars, to in, in, if they're going to be moving out anytime sooner or, or, or paying their own bills anytime soon. They're going to be applying that. So, I think we have a unique opportunity to make a lasting impression on them where they're actually applying what they learn and deepening their knowledge as they're going through some things.
So, and of course, you're always going to learn, you know, when you're out there on your own, you're always going to make mistakes. But if we can stave off a handful of those mistakes, I think they'll be in a much better place.
Scott Lee: Well, or even about making mistakes, if, if you make a mistake and you will, being able to recognize after you've made it, “Oh, wait, maybe I should have done this or that” rather than just being angry because you can't figure out why whatever went wrong, went wrong, is a huge skill and something we do a really.
Good job of in a lot of other places, a lot of other subjects, but not a good job, in personal finance in a lot of cases. Yeah.
Vince Shorb: Yeah.
Scott Lee: So, I mentioned that I had been a high school economics teacher. And, I taught high school economics, both in Tennessee and Georgia, and it was a one semester class, and I tried to work as much personal finance in as I could, as much as the curriculum will allow.
And when I became a school administrator, the high school curriculum changed where it was a semester of economics and a semester of personal finance at the same time or one right after the other. But, when I was teaching economics, one thing that I noticed, with a large group of my students was that, and it'd be doing something like, the money multiplier where the, all the economics books claim that, you can create money using the banking system. And I literally would have to sometimes have to use that, using monopoly money with the kids. And I realized we're describing it wrong. It's, we shouldn't be call it, we shouldn't call it money creation.
We should be called, we should call it shared wealth or something, but during that, I began to realize that a lot of my students had no real connection with financial institutions, particularly banks, true banks., And their parents did not use the banking system, or if they did, it was strictly they had a savings account because they got paid by direct deposit and then everything else was in cash.
And a lot of people are missing out. I realized, “gosh, there's so much that my kids, my students are missing out of just because they have, they don't have that connection.” What advice would you offer to an economics teacher who's running into that kind of problem with their students?
Vince Shorb: Very good. Good that you noticed that a lot of teachers would miss that. So great job there first off. And I think, there's always unique challenges with any socioeconomic status. We're serving. A lot of people think it's harder to teach people in lower socioeconomic rungs because, they're they don't have that relationship with banking.
They don't have the means to to invest in things like that, where, when I found it, I'll circle back to that question just because I think there's a important distinction for educators to make sure that they're modifying their lessons to meet the needs of their students like like you, you did. I grew up in, Huntington Beach and on one side of Warner Avenue was Santa Ana school district, Long Beach school district.
The other side was Orange County school district, right? One had money, the others didn't. And I, when my early teaching career, that was my circle, right? That's where I was. I was even up in LA County. One day I'd be going through metal detectors, people sharing books and so forth. The next day I'd be at a place where they've spent 10 million on track and field, right?
So. Big challenges, but what I found in lower socioeconomic areas, they didn't have that relationship with baking that you point out. They didn't have a good understand that they never saw their parents utilizing those systems. They didn't have a lot of hope for the future. So when you're talking about compounding interest they didn't have a lot of hope for that future and they didn't think they could become a millionaire, but the interesting thing is, they knew a lot more about budgeting, a lot more about delayed gratification, a lot more about opportunity costs, many were interested in entrepreneurship as well.
So, they had some core strengths that put them in a really good position. Now you go back to the other side of Warner Avenue. And the students, had a lot of hope for the future. They didn't have any basic understanding of budgeting or delayed gratification, a lot of bad habits. They were more familiar with the banking system.
Although I had one young lady that said, she just wanted to use her ATM card and didn't want to work. That was a heartbreaking story when I, when I had to tell her, you had to put money in. She didn't realize. So that was, that was, I hate to break hearts, but I broke her heart there. So, so, when we're teaching we have to understand where our students are socioeconomically.
The other interesting thing, thing is. Education when it comes to personal finance often works backwards. So, we'd get emails all the time, especially when I was out there early going through those areas, it was emails saying, “Hey, you taught my kid about this. Is that right?” Or when we do parent and youth events together, like we did a lot of, presentations for how to pay for college with the parents and the teenagers there.
And the parents would often be asking more questions than the youth because they're like, “Hey, I want to learn this too.” So it, it works backwards oftentimes. I think when we're in those areas, if any of the teachers are listening, I think a great thing to do is to partner with a local institution, taking them on a tour, showing them what it's like in a bank, how to act professionally, what you need to open accounts, what accounts are, and I think anytime we can get those, and I know a lot of schools have in classroom, or in school, credit unions and banks on campus that are doing that now, which is pretty cool.
It's neat. I always remember back when I was very fortunate with my parents, my mom took me to world bank, had a passbook account going to my thing. They'd stamp it. They'd show me how much I made two cents. I'd be excited. Yes. I didn't have to do anything. I got this. So, I was very blessed in that sense.
And I wish all these kids would have that opportunity to do so. But yeah, you bring up a very valid point. Every student that we serve is so different. Their understanding of the system that we have is different. It's from a different perspective, from a different environment. And the more we can try to understand the students where they're at addressing their, their specific things.
So, if your curriculum is talking about banking from a perspective of what an average person should know. It's really important the teacher understands who the students are, adapts that curriculum to meet the needs of the student, and also brings a good way to bridge the parents back in. Hey, we're doing this.
We gave your kid this lesson on banking. Here it is, right? So, we can utilize that as a way to educate parents. Hopefully they'll get their kids involved too.
Scott Lee: This is just something that occurs to me because I've visited a school one time that was just getting , the in school credit union set up. Have you found that that works and that that's easy to set up?
Vince Shorb: We've worked with a lot of those types of institutions in, in developing their programs. So, they're bringing into schools. It's always a challenge to set up just because, anytime you're the administrative side of school, you know how it is. We got a check for 297 had 10 stamps, 10 signatures and staples.
I'm like, okay, this is, this is indicative of what people have to go through. So. Anytime we're pushing things through the administrative side. It's always a challenge. And I think too, there's, there's concerns with commercial interests on properties and so forth. And, back in the day, you had all your things marketed on campuses.
So I think there's a big pushback there now, but I think with, with finances, if they're doing their due diligence and making sure that, “hey this bank or credit union is in good standing. They're offering free checking the savings to students so they're not charging them things.” There's, there's invested in the training and, and, and supporting I think it could be a very fruitful relationship, for, for both parties and it helps the school earn money and it helps that, that credit union or bank gain clients. That's what they're looking to do. You know, let's, let's just be very clear about that. But if they have a good, if they're a strong institution that has free checking or savings. I don't have any problem with it. But the, the process of going through that, even on college campuses, it's very steep and a lot of competition. These banks and credit unions are vying to get into these schools, high schools and colleges to earn that business because that's the next generation of customer.
So, I think there is a lot of opportunity. I think there has to be a lot of due diligence when it comes to who you're bringing in. And also, besides just the money they're bringing into the school, it needs to be, what are you doing to educate our students in supporting their financial literacy?
Because we have limited time, what are you doing to make that a reality for them?
Scott Lee: Yeah, very good point.
Scott Lee: So as we look to the future, and you hinted at this earlier, there's, there's a lot of jobs out there, that haven't even been invented yet, and yeah, before we started talking, we mentioned briefly something about AI that had nothing to do with personal finance.
We can imagine that there's a lot of things that are even beyond what was on Star Trek. 30 years ago. Why is it important as we think about the future, as we think about jobs of the future that haven't been invented yet? Why is personal finance important for that?
Vince Shorb: Yeah. You know, we take a broader definition of personal finance that includes, entrepreneurship, career, job, side hustle. So, I would say,
“Hey, if you don't have money coming in, what are you going to manage?” And so, you need that money coming in to be able to manage money. Really? That's all. That's all personal to take out the, the, the, all the complexities of personal finances.
Can you earn money? Can you control your expenses so you can save on a regular basis? And not only for security reasons, but to grow and, and to pay for those things that you want in the future. So really the, the income side is a critical piece. And I think, that whole career exploration is key.
When we look at what we've been teaching for the last hundred years, right, early 1900s, it's been pretty much the core same subjects, right. And there's been huge changes. Even when we look at the college admission standards since 1913, there's 300 schools that agreed, “Hey, this is what we're looking at.”
They haven't changed since then. And, back in 1913, what do we have, I mean, we had, in New York, they have these bell ringers, so they didn't have electricity, a lot of places that people go around bells to wake people up for work. We had milkman delivery. We have this now we have flying cars, you know, driving AI, things that are like the scary things we talked about before, where they're just filling in videos and you may not need guests in the future. Right. So, and we even see the Actors Guild being very scared about that and they're saying, hey, you can't use our, in a lot of these past negotiations, the name, image, and likeness were, were negotiated away.
So, they may not have their name, image, image, and likeness in the future. There, there's some interesting things that may happen. So, I agree completely the world's changing, but we haven't adapted, what we're teaching to, to accommodate this new world thing. And I was looking at like, if I had a tribe, a hundred people I just don't want to have a hundred fishermen and a hundred shelter builders, right? I want to have people that know how to grow food. I want to know people that can sew or people that can help keep the place clean and all these diverse skill sets. And I think there's so much interest that youth have, I think helping them explore their interests, explore those things, and then also taking the next step, “Hey, these are your interests. Is there a opportunity for that in the future to become something that you can do for a job or a business, or is it just a hobby.” Meaning maybe if you wanted to be a, say something that's going to be outdated here soon and hopefully not, but let's say a checker at a grocery store, right?
We're already seeing that these self-checkouts, we're seeing Amazon with nobody there, and you're just walking through with your cell phone and checking out without anybody.
Scott Lee: Literally I put something in the, in the buggy and it automatically adds it. So, you know, it, yeah, all kinds of things that are being experimented with it's amazing.
Vince Shorb: It's scary.
Scott Lee: Yeah. Yeah.
Vince Shorb: And, and, you know, so I think if they could find a passion and then they can say, “okay, hey, is that going to be there 20 years in the future?” I think we're still teaching to the past in many cases. And we, we look at the college rates of, 45 percent that do the third that drop out of those that graduate 45 percent a decade after they graduate college are in a job that does not require a degree.
So that's scary. And I think that might escalate with these advances that you're talking about. So, I think the more we can. Expose them to opportunities, help them find their passion, interest, and, and, and curate that into income opportunities. And again, helping them evaluate, is this job going to be here?
Is this going to be here in 10, 20, 30 years when you need it? This, I think all critical elements and I'm hopeful for the future, but also a little scared too for the youth, because I don't think they're really prepared for what's coming. I'm not, I try to look at it and read about this, these advances, like, “wow, how will this impact just from a selfish perspective, my business, right?”
And it's a struggle we have with our board and so forth. How's that going to impact education? How's that going to impact what we do? And from a, a broader perspective, I'm thinking, okay, when I'm going through the checkout or when I go and take an Uber, to go somewhere, and I'm thinking, okay, I'm talking to this person, understanding this is what they're doing to fulfill, make up a gap in their income, right? And I'm understanding their story and hearing what they do in the daytime and what they're doing at night, which is Uber driving and just thinking, Hey, five years from now. Will I be talking to somebody or will I be having a conversation with like we spoke before with the AI right?
Scott Lee: Well, yeah, I mean self-driving cars are coming. It's just a question of when.
Well, I certainly appreciate your time today. I've enjoyed having you on the podcast Vince Is there any? Stories or anything you'd like to share about a student before we go?
Vince Shorb: Yeah, you know, I think one of the most meaningful time and the reason that I always go back to this one about 16 years ago, 17 years ago, but the reason I go back to this one often I reflect on this quite a bit is at a time where I invested a lot to the company.
I didn't know where it was going and, and the market was going south. It was 2008, 2009. A lot of things were moving. I'm like, “man, maybe I made a mistake” and I ran into this young lady at Target. I used to, volunteer at Huntington Beach High School just down the street from where I was. And, uh, ran into this young lady.
She said, “you know, you came into my class.” So, you know, 8 months ago, whatever. They said, “yeah, I want to let you know, I really enjoyed it. And, and I started to do the, their match savings plan or whatever she called it, a hundred dollars a month or every two weeks.” And, and, I'm like, “wow, that's awesome!”
And just, just think, she lit up and exciting. And it was so meaningful for me. And it came at such an important time in my life where it really helped me solidify what direction I needed to go. And I just thought, okay, if she just. Pick up that one habit fast forward five years, 10 years, 20 years.
What can that mean to her life? And it's just such a, solidified me saying, “hey, I'm committed to this. I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory. If I glow out, go out, but I'm, I'm committed to this cause and committed to, to getting this information out there.” But just also this, that one tiny little change that can make such a huge impact in somebody's life.
And, I love, I love those aspects. And I do miss, I'm, I'm, I do a lot of teaching for, to teachers and to those that are training other people in personal finance. And I still make time to go out and do that, and then I love those aspects.
And I'm looking forward to, doing more of that. So, I can just hear more of those personal stories, as opposed to relayed from a teacher, “hey, I had a great experience.” This student said this, there's just a gap that I'm like, dang, I wish I could just, be out there all the time again, but, yeah, it's a story that still inspires me today.
Scott Lee: Great. So where can people go to find out more?
Vince Shorb: Yeah. Anybody interested in financial literacy education, or if you're passionate about it, the advocate, or, or just want to teach it, connect with me on LinkedIn. Vince Schorb, our website also is financial Educators council dot O R G. We also have a YouTube channel that I've been doing a lot of the advocacy type videos, reviews of state standards.
And if you just look up national financial educators on YouTube, you'll find us there as well.
Scott Lee: Hey, great. And we will be sure and link in the show notes to all of those locations once again, thank you for joining us today, Vince.
Vince Shorb: Thanks, Scott. It's great being here.
Scott Lee: The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website at w w w dot oncoursesolutions dot net.
This has been episode 10 of the 2024 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us, in person and on social media. Also, five-star reviews on your podcast app helps others find us. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions LLC, Scott Lee producer, a member of the PodNooga Network. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website w w w dot thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee. Please follow me on social media, my handle on Instagram and Twitter is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com
