Students get crash course in finances

Austintown and Boardman students got a dose of financial reality.

The Associated School Employees Credit Union, Junior Achievement of the Mahoning Valley and the Williamson College of Business Administration (WCBA) sponsored the third annual financial life skills conference called Financial Starting Points Apr. 23.

“The seminar was to help demystify financial concepts and better equip these students to weather economic downturns,” said Michael Kurish, chief executive of the Associated School Employees Credit Union.

Approximately 600 area high school students from 17 high schools attended and received education and hands-on experience in three critical areas of financial literacy. These included managing credit, investing in their future, and building a personal budget. Twenty area leaders from various segments of business offered insight and information during the concurrent sessions.

Noelle Matiste, Business and Technology teacher from Boardman High School, thought this year’s event was great.

“The students enjoyed the budgeting section and thought the speakers were all really good.”

New to this year’s event was a life skills session. Each student was given a salary and visited different stations to determine their monthly expenses such as food, insurance, transportation, clothing, education and more. Based on their given salaries, they had to make tough budget decisions.

Paul McFadden, chief development officer from University Development at Youngstown State University, spoke to students about building their personal budgets as they enter college and/or begin their careers after graduation from high school.

“Selecting a college and weighing whether to take on student-loan debt are not solely education-related decisions; they are also major financial decisions,” said Michele Merkel, president of Junior Achievement of Mahoning Valley. “We don’t want our newly-minted college graduates defaulting on their student loans which can affect their credit rating for years, or struggling to service those loans.

“Junior Achievement aims to provide students with a strong set of money-management skills, so they can effectively budget, use credit, invest and save. Since April is Financial Literacy Month, it is a great time to reinforce the importance of those skills.”