Junior Executives : College Class Teaches Kids the ABCs of Money
They’re young. It’s summer. And the living could be easy. But instead of the beach or the mall or the movies, they’re in Room 107 at Harbor College every Monday through Thursday morning, learning about preferred stocks and mutual funds, dividends and diversification.
And at an age when some kids have barely mastered state capitals, they’re talking venture capital.
“What’s the Dow Industrial Average?” asked Phil Albitz, a Torrance investment adviser and one of their instructors.
“An index of 30 stocks,” Peter Aguilera, a fidgety 10-year-old, answered immediately.
“Name several stocks,” Albitz continued.
“McDonald’s. Coca-Cola. GM,” said Mark Juravic, 13, of San Pedro.
“True or false: Growth stocks never go down,” Albitz asked.
“False,” Megan Albrite, 10, of Harbor City said after several agonizing moments of indecision.
Officially, the class at Harbor College’s Extension Program is known as Money Management for Future Executives. Unofficially, the 20 students, ages 10 to 14, call it fun.
“I don’t like math that much, but this is fun because you learn about stocks and making out checks,” Megan said, one hand tugging at her long blond hair, the other holding a Forbes performance sheet on mutual funds.
“I just want to learn more about the money world. So I know about good investments and stocks and bonds,” added Peter, wide-eyed and wearing a bright pink T-shirt and trunks. “It’s work,” he said. “But it’s fun, too.”
The 12-week course, offered for $45 each summer at Harbor College, began last year. Four days a week, from 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., the students hear about stock markets and banking, learn about investments and commissions, and see charts, chalkboard diagrams and slide shows explaining, in simple yet detailed terms, ways of making money and saving it.
Some of the students come from families where one or both parents make their living in business or finance. Thirteen-year-old Rob Roy Jackson’s father, LeRoy, for instance, is city manager of Torrance.
But others in the class aren’t from families whose bread and butter is business. In fact, in Aguilera’s case, it’s the other way around. His father’s a baker.
“The philosophy behind the class is that kids should develop a healthy respect for money while they’re young. And secondly, it’s part of that whole school of teaching kids early to make things, like language or math, less mysterious,” said Adell Shay, director of Harbor College’s Extension Program.
“They have this awesome concept of money, and this makes it easier for them to understand,” added Shay, who developed the course last year as one of a three-part program on entrepreneurship, career exploration and money management for youngsters.
So what are we raising here? Junior Yuppies? Puppies?
“Believe me, no one is trying to recruit them to be stockbrokers,” said Gary Cummings, a financial consultant from Torrance and one of the instructors.
True, Cummings says, the notion of breeding children as brokers or fostering young financiers might be offensive if that’s what the class was all about. But it’s not, he says.
“Money is important. There’s no way around it. And there doesn’t seem to be any place in education to give kids a basic understanding of financial planning,” Cummings said.
More to the point, Cummings says, the class is only one part of an education that he hopes includes other disciplines. “I think there’s a place for everything, and everything has a place,” he said. “But you can’t pay your bills by reading a novel or writing a poem.”
Not all of the students are there by choice, of course, even if they are enjoying the class.
“I was going to take the model-making class, but my parents wanted me to take this,” said Shelby Jordan Jr. of Rancho Palos Verdes.
And will the class help him in his future career? The 5-foot-4 11-year-old shrugged. “I want to be a basketball player,” he said.
Despite such lukewarm responses to the course, school officials say the two 12-week sessions filled quickly this summer and last. The youngest student has been a 7-year-old prodigy who took one of last summer’s classes.
“We thought he was too young for the course, but his father insisted he could handle it,” Shay recalled. To prove the point, she says, the father had his son rattle off enough financial data to send Shay’s head spinning. “The child was a genius,” Shay said.
But although the course accommodates the gifted, it is designed for any student with an interest in learning. “This class gives kids some idea of what it really costs to live,” Shay said.
And one important lesson is repeated time and again.
“What’s the one thing I told you never to forget?” Albitz asked during a recent class.
“There’s no free lunch,” several students replied in unison.
The lessons are not easy, but then again, there may be no easy way to teach money management to a classroom of children. And as a recent discussion about the Dow Industrial Average demonstrates, the children are learning, even about insider trading.
“When the class started, we asked them what the Dow Industrial Average was,” Cummings said. And several of the students, he added, had the exact same wrong answer: 5%.
As Cummings and others concede, the class is not for everyone, and no one would suggest that the students, particularly the young ones, are all fascinated by high finance.
“A 10-year-old probably doesn’t need it,” Cummings said. And, he added, “there’s no doubt about it. A lot of kids probably won’t retain anything.”
But by his calculations, Cummings guesses that one-third of the students who have taken the class “really understand” money management when the course ends, and another third have “a general concept” of banking, savings and stock markets.
The rest, apparently, have only missed out on some matinees.
And even those who had done their homework and studied Standard and Poor showed some momentary lapses during a recent class, on a bright sunny morning one day before the Fourth of July.
“Name two blue-chip stocks,” Albitz asked the class.
“Magic Mountain?” one student shouted.
No. But it does have a great roller-coaster.
