This week’s class was very easy to wrap up. The class had limited time to stay in instruction with our group because of a test they needed to take with their regular teacher but for the time we did have them we gave the post assessment and once compared to the pre assessment given on the first day, the results were very clear that the students have learned and benefited greatly from this course we were privileged to share with them. They learned how to manage their spending.   To track their spending and to save money toward their future.  The students learned how to build their own wealth and how to recognize what their goals for long term wealth are now after this class.   They also seemed to learn new strategies for controlling their debt and ways to establish credit.  They also gave us a very happy good bye and sent us on our way with a big thank you and said they planned to send us thank you notes in recognition to their appreciation of the course.

We helped the students during this week’s instruction to use their budgets and day to day spending exercises to determine their net worth.  We discussed the positive and negative aspects of credit and we gave the students a better understanding of how building credit can be a great thing for them.  Many of the students voiced concern over obtaining credit cards but through guidance we gave them a better understanding of how beneficial establishing good credit can be.  We also expressed great concern to them over not managing their credit and of how dangerous it can be when good credit goes wrong.  It can burn your ability to obtain the things in life that one chases after.  To keep the student’s interest in what we were teaching them we decided to also play a couple of games with them.  We decided to have the students split themselves into groups of two and as two teams, face off against each other in an exciting game of something similar to “family feud”.  We asked the students finance based questions and in the end after an hour of team work we rewarded the entire class with a reward of candy for their great work. They worked really hard realizing the benefits of good credit and how important it is to stop using just cash because it cannot be recorded and no one will trust that you are responsible in your ability to make payments for the things you want if you have not established a long history of good credit.  We left this class very happy.

This week we went over many of areas with our class.   We discussed budgeting.  We went over what the differences were between needs and want and asked each class member what they felt was of value to them.  We played a game using M&M’s which allowed them to see the differences in managing your money and saving without spending each penny they earned immediately and leaving themselves with nothing to apply to their futures.  We assigned the students a homework assignment of having each of them record their daily spending and returning to us the following week so that we could go over the positive changes they may need to make to change any negative spending habits.   The group all felt this class was still going well and was still as motivated as before in continuing to learn the students on a personal basis when it came to their financial habits and ways we could use this course to assist them.  Questions that any of our class members had, we addressed and ideas they had for areas of finance they wanted to learn more of, we made sure to follow up on.  The game was a great idea and after the instruction ended, it made for a great end of the hour treat.