MAC Students Educating the Community: Financial Literacy Project

Author: Cori

Project Goal

For our 600 class, we’ve undertaken a project in which we promote financial literacy in the community by splitting up into groups and developing presentations, or other methods, to reach out to potential beneficiaries of personal finance information. Each group’s goal is to spread information about financial literacy to people who may need it.

Our Group’s Project

Our group found an organization located in Raleigh which focuses on helping women look for jobs and manage their finances. Because these women are starting new jobs, they benefit most from information about budgeting, saving money, managing bank accounts, credit cards and credit reports. We developed two presentations that focused on each of these topics.

For the first presentation we:

• Developed a sample budget and walked the women through the steps of creating their own budget.
• Gave tips on making their budget work such as setting aside money for each expense and daily money saving tips.
• Explained the importance of managing their own bank account and balancing their checkbook to keep track of their monthly balance.

We also asked if there were any topics in particular they wanted to learn, so we could research and address those topics at our second presentation.

For the second presentation we:

• Discussed the importance of building their credit and the best ways to do that.
• Explained the advantages and disadvantages of having a credit card and warned them about the ease of falling into debt by over using credit cards.
• Showed how to request their credit reports and taught them how to read each section of their reports.

The Results

Each presentation was successful. The women had lots of questions and were really receptive to our tips. They expressed to us they weren’t familiar with many of these topics and we really felt like we helped them. These financial literacy projects were a wonderful experience and we hope to return next semester to give these presentations again, to a new group of women.