Financial Literacy Is Essential for Our Youth

Available for Interviews: Chris Janeway

Chris Janeway is Founder & CEO Fourth Point Wealth and coaches investors throughout southern CA.  He is also a national speaker, financial coach, and advocate for financial literacy.

What Chris Janeway can say in an interview about
Financial Literacy:

The socio-economic wealth gap is clear by age 15 according to the PISA Study by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (well before these teenagers have started their financial lives). The 2019 study took measures of economic, social, and cultural status rather than simply household income averages for a particular school. 

Janeway can share with your audience the financial fundamentals that can help not only the youth but everyone where holes in their financial education exist. Financial literacy holds the key to unlocking seemingly elusive economic security.

Economic outcomes can’t be solved simply through financial literacy but teaching young people simple basics is invaluable in preventing them from going “backward.” Many of these young people don’t have any financial role models to look to and the schools aren’t equipped to advise them. Often during lessons Janeway has delivered, the teachers are taking vigorous notes along with students. It’s perhaps the first time they’ve been exposed to information as well. Supplementing into the schools a financial literacy training program can help connect community leaders to these kids and, not only provide them with the foundation for a successful financial life but be the mentor/leader that the child may be missing. 

Fourth Point Wealth has built and run financial literacy programs over the last 10 years and served kids from kindergarten through college ages. In Janeway’s experience, while the language of finance may be foreign to many of these kids with lower resources, they are extremely eager to learn about it. They want to become independent and once provided the language and basics, they become deeply engaged in the concepts. 

While, again, financial outcomes are multivariable, it is critical that school and community organizations connect these dots to ensure that their students don’t leave High School without some of these tools. If nothing else, it can help them avoid major mistakes out of ignorance and begin the path in a new direction. The students WANT to learn this information and are yearning for success. Let’s connect them with that new path!

Janeway recently launched a financial training program for the University of California – Berkeley football team specifically because, while at a great university, so many of these young men have had zero financial exposure. Janeway’s team spent a day with the team last August and is set to launch their curriculum and mentor program in the spring.

Here’s a link to the PISA Study 

The real challenge is finding any research that shows results rather than just what points to the problem. When our youth have a basic toolkit—knowledge—to address their financial concerns, they are setting themselves up for a successful and more secure future.

 

When Chris is away from the office, he loves to golf, coach youth sports, and enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife, Katy, and their sons, Brennan and Graham.