Those Born 1930-1979
READ TO THE BOTTOM FOR QUOTE OF THE MONTH BY JAY LENO. IF YOU DON'T READ ANYTHING ELSE---VERY WELL STATED
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they
were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get
tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs
covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster
seats, seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from
this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with
sugar, but we weren't overweight because,
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back
when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the
hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a
few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nitendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150
channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell
phones, no personal computer! s, no Internet or chat rooms.......
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits
from these accidents.
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us
forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and
tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out
very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the
bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had
to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They
actually sided with the law!
These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers
and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of inovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL
WITH IT ALL!
The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:
'With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding,
severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with
the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time
to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?'
Showing posts with label generation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label generation. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Will our kids be dumb and broke part 2
Although Jump$tart and its members applaud stand-alone courses that students must pass, usually in high school, they are promoting the idea that the younger financial education starts, the better.
Jump$tart has created a set of voluntary standards that include benchmarks for elementary, middle and high school. The network's approach is to build students' financial skills from basic concepts to more-sophisticated decisions.
Here are some of its benchmarks for understanding credit that millions of Americans are clearly lacking:
By the fourth grade, students should understand that responsible borrowers pay back loans as promised.
By the eighth grade, students should understand how interest rates and loan lengths affect the cost of credit.
By the 12th grade, students should be able to define standard credit card disclosure terms and know how to fill out an application. ("Not that we are suggesting they apply for credit but they understand how to do so," Levine hastened to add.)
How kids learn about money Despite an apparent hodgepodge of laws, standards and requirements, Duvall believes educators are making progress on a clearer blueprint for giving kids financial skills they will keep for life.
That's a tall order, as most of us forget fractions the minute we're on summer vacation.
But what money has on its side, in a sense, is that financial knowledge can be made concrete for kids from Day One. Everyone, even a young child, deals with money or watches parents deal with money every day.
Even though financial requirements are all over the map right now, Duvall pointed out that every lesson counts. It's hard to know whether a 16-year-old will retain any of the high school skills she learned when she's 26 and buying her first car, but she might.
"My argument from the start is that we have a lot of work to do," Duvall said. "And it's better to have taught kids something rather than nothing."
What you can do The other advantage of financial education being rather fluid right now is that everyone can and should get involved. There may be no more important way to contribute to the world than to take one of these steps:
Contact your school board. Whether you're a parent or not, writing a basic letter of endorsement for financial education will help build momentum at the local level.
Learn what's out there. Jump$tart operates a national clearinghouse of financial literacy programs, and Levine suggested sending some to your schools because "sometimes teachers don't know where to start." Jump$tart recommends two curricula that schools can adopt: the National Council on Economic Education's Financial Fitness for Life, a comprehensive K-12 program available for purchase; and High School Financial Planning, a four-year curriculum created by the National Endowment for Financial Education. The latter is free.
Be a better role model. "You don't have to be the teacher, but just have a conversation with your children," Levine said. "Take something specific like a stimulus check or bonus or tax refund, and make a minibudget within that, so kids can see how you make financial decisions with a finite amount."
According to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling's survey, parents are among the most powerful influences on how and what kids learn about money. About half of those who closely monitor their finances reported learning those money-management skills at home.
By MP Dunleavey
Jump$tart has created a set of voluntary standards that include benchmarks for elementary, middle and high school. The network's approach is to build students' financial skills from basic concepts to more-sophisticated decisions.
Here are some of its benchmarks for understanding credit that millions of Americans are clearly lacking:
By the fourth grade, students should understand that responsible borrowers pay back loans as promised.
By the eighth grade, students should understand how interest rates and loan lengths affect the cost of credit.
By the 12th grade, students should be able to define standard credit card disclosure terms and know how to fill out an application. ("Not that we are suggesting they apply for credit but they understand how to do so," Levine hastened to add.)
How kids learn about money Despite an apparent hodgepodge of laws, standards and requirements, Duvall believes educators are making progress on a clearer blueprint for giving kids financial skills they will keep for life.
That's a tall order, as most of us forget fractions the minute we're on summer vacation.
But what money has on its side, in a sense, is that financial knowledge can be made concrete for kids from Day One. Everyone, even a young child, deals with money or watches parents deal with money every day.
Even though financial requirements are all over the map right now, Duvall pointed out that every lesson counts. It's hard to know whether a 16-year-old will retain any of the high school skills she learned when she's 26 and buying her first car, but she might.
"My argument from the start is that we have a lot of work to do," Duvall said. "And it's better to have taught kids something rather than nothing."
What you can do The other advantage of financial education being rather fluid right now is that everyone can and should get involved. There may be no more important way to contribute to the world than to take one of these steps:
Contact your school board. Whether you're a parent or not, writing a basic letter of endorsement for financial education will help build momentum at the local level.
Learn what's out there. Jump$tart operates a national clearinghouse of financial literacy programs, and Levine suggested sending some to your schools because "sometimes teachers don't know where to start." Jump$tart recommends two curricula that schools can adopt: the National Council on Economic Education's Financial Fitness for Life, a comprehensive K-12 program available for purchase; and High School Financial Planning, a four-year curriculum created by the National Endowment for Financial Education. The latter is free.
Be a better role model. "You don't have to be the teacher, but just have a conversation with your children," Levine said. "Take something specific like a stimulus check or bonus or tax refund, and make a minibudget within that, so kids can see how you make financial decisions with a finite amount."
According to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling's survey, parents are among the most powerful influences on how and what kids learn about money. About half of those who closely monitor their finances reported learning those money-management skills at home.
By MP Dunleavey
Will our kids be dumb and broke part 1
Will our kids be dumb and broke?
You don't have to be a parent to know that this country has a giant spending problem -- and that we must teach the next generation to do better. But how?
We've gone from being a nation with a slight overspending problem to a country steeped in more debt than in the entire history of lending and borrowing. Homes, jobs and futures are on the line.
The situation is dire. According to a survey commissioned by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling and released in April:
A third of Americans have no personal nonretirement savings.
A quarter have saved nothing for retirement.
One in 10 have trouble with mortgage payments.
Millions struggle to pay bills on time, with 7%, or about 15 million adults, getting calls from collectors or considering bankruptcy.
What the data make perfectly clear is that we cannot afford to raise another generation that's skidding toward financial disaster, ignorant of the most basic concepts about debt and savings.
"Thanks to the subprime-mortgage crisis, everyone is seeing the consequences of financial illiteracy. It's a front-page issue now," said Robert F. Duvall, the president and chief executive of the National Council on Economic Education.
Study after depressing study shows that millions of Americans can't handle even the basics of their financial lives, never mind the complexity of money in this high-tech, "your mortgage is really a magic carpet" era.
To his point, Duvall said he was at that moment attending an international conference on financial education, along with 250 people locally and 500 participating via webcast, including representatives from 44 countries. The conference was sponsored by the U.S. Treasury and the Office of Economic Cooperation and Development.
"This is a global issue now," Duvall said. The battle cry that's being heard from all sides: "Education, education, education."
Financial educators, unite! At first, financial literacy was a struggling grass-roots effort propelled by concerned parents and educators.
The movement has gained strength and momentum in recent years, as people throughout America and the world have begun witnessing one of the hairiest, scariest financial climates start to ravage lives everywhere.
Though the causes are complicated -- let's not forget the massive deregulation of the banking and credit industries in the 1980s, never mind our leetle credit crisis -- educators are realizing there is only one way to turn this Titanic around.
Duvall was recently asked to testify in Congress before the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.
After his testimony, lawmakers asked Duvall the $500 billion question: If there were one thing he would recommend to remedy the mortgage and credit crisis, what would it be?
Business school for kidsSee how one Chicago school teaches kids about financial literacy.
"We keep trying to get a quick fix for problems that have been staring us in the face," Duvall said. The truth is that building a money-smart populace is going to require four things:
A public that demands it.
Continuing pressure from parents and watchdogs.
Money to provide schools and teachers with the resources they need to teach financial skills.
Testing to make sure kids are mastering the knowledge they need.
Teach your children well Clearly, the answer is to implement a nationwide financial-education curriculum by tomorrow, right?
Not so fast.
In this country, education is largely a local issue. While financial-education programs are on the rise, different states, counties and school districts are taking different approaches, said Laura Levine, the executive director of the Jump$tart Coalition, a network of 180 organizations focused on developing financial education.
The coalition offers a map of states' efforts to make money skills a part of kids' education.
And there is some good news from the 2007 biennial report card released by the National Council on Economic Education:
Forty states report personal-finance education as part of their K-12 curricula, up from 21 in 1998.
Seven states, up from four in 2002, now make personal-finance education (as part of another class or as a stand-alone credit) a requirement for high school graduation: Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New York and Utah.
Alabama requires that personal finance be taught in middle school.
By MP Dunleavey
You don't have to be a parent to know that this country has a giant spending problem -- and that we must teach the next generation to do better. But how?
We've gone from being a nation with a slight overspending problem to a country steeped in more debt than in the entire history of lending and borrowing. Homes, jobs and futures are on the line.
The situation is dire. According to a survey commissioned by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling and released in April:
A third of Americans have no personal nonretirement savings.
A quarter have saved nothing for retirement.
One in 10 have trouble with mortgage payments.
Millions struggle to pay bills on time, with 7%, or about 15 million adults, getting calls from collectors or considering bankruptcy.
What the data make perfectly clear is that we cannot afford to raise another generation that's skidding toward financial disaster, ignorant of the most basic concepts about debt and savings.
"Thanks to the subprime-mortgage crisis, everyone is seeing the consequences of financial illiteracy. It's a front-page issue now," said Robert F. Duvall, the president and chief executive of the National Council on Economic Education.
Study after depressing study shows that millions of Americans can't handle even the basics of their financial lives, never mind the complexity of money in this high-tech, "your mortgage is really a magic carpet" era.
To his point, Duvall said he was at that moment attending an international conference on financial education, along with 250 people locally and 500 participating via webcast, including representatives from 44 countries. The conference was sponsored by the U.S. Treasury and the Office of Economic Cooperation and Development.
"This is a global issue now," Duvall said. The battle cry that's being heard from all sides: "Education, education, education."
Financial educators, unite! At first, financial literacy was a struggling grass-roots effort propelled by concerned parents and educators.
The movement has gained strength and momentum in recent years, as people throughout America and the world have begun witnessing one of the hairiest, scariest financial climates start to ravage lives everywhere.
Though the causes are complicated -- let's not forget the massive deregulation of the banking and credit industries in the 1980s, never mind our leetle credit crisis -- educators are realizing there is only one way to turn this Titanic around.
Duvall was recently asked to testify in Congress before the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.
After his testimony, lawmakers asked Duvall the $500 billion question: If there were one thing he would recommend to remedy the mortgage and credit crisis, what would it be?
Business school for kidsSee how one Chicago school teaches kids about financial literacy.
"We keep trying to get a quick fix for problems that have been staring us in the face," Duvall said. The truth is that building a money-smart populace is going to require four things:
A public that demands it.
Continuing pressure from parents and watchdogs.
Money to provide schools and teachers with the resources they need to teach financial skills.
Testing to make sure kids are mastering the knowledge they need.
Teach your children well Clearly, the answer is to implement a nationwide financial-education curriculum by tomorrow, right?
Not so fast.
In this country, education is largely a local issue. While financial-education programs are on the rise, different states, counties and school districts are taking different approaches, said Laura Levine, the executive director of the Jump$tart Coalition, a network of 180 organizations focused on developing financial education.
The coalition offers a map of states' efforts to make money skills a part of kids' education.
And there is some good news from the 2007 biennial report card released by the National Council on Economic Education:
Forty states report personal-finance education as part of their K-12 curricula, up from 21 in 1998.
Seven states, up from four in 2002, now make personal-finance education (as part of another class or as a stand-alone credit) a requirement for high school graduation: Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New York and Utah.
Alabama requires that personal finance be taught in middle school.
By MP Dunleavey
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Credit Problem in America
We have a serious credit problem in our nation. If you read or listen to the media you would think that this problem came out of nowhere. This is not the case. This problem has been going on for a number of years we are just at the point where we have to start changing the way we live. My grandparents generation were raised in or shortly after the deprection. They placed a high value on saving and spending money only when you had it. They did not upgrade houses and cars. They uesed credit only on extreme times. They saved more than enougth for retirement. Then the baby boomers generation came along. They were used to good things and did not first hand experience the bad times. Alot of them went to Vietnam and came back living for today not thinking about tomorrow. They have continued to rack up credit card debt, have upgraded houses, cars and most have very little savings. They also have not saved for very much for retirement. They major thing that is saving this generation is that they are inheriting money from their parents to help pay things off and help with retirement and also have tapped their equity in their house to continue their life-styles. This generation has also raised generation x that not only wants the nice things now but they expect to have them. This generation will not have the luxury of a huge inheritance because it will already be spent. Most will just be happy to not owe anything for their parents funerals. Generation X has grown up watching a waitress (Rachel from Friends) live in a nice apartment in new york always having nice clothes. This is not real life. You have to make choices and might not have enougth money for every thing you want. This creates bigger problems. Generation X (which I am part of) is a generation if it makes us happy then it must be ok and I don't care about the consequences. If you look at the statistics the number one reason for divorce has been money. Money creates stress on an already hard comittment. Look at the different generations ideas on money compared to the divorce rate. They seem to go hand in hand. We could be in a very serious problme come retirement time if we can even put money into a savings account but expect to live on it for 30 years, as we continue to live longer. Compound the fact that we don't know if Social Security will be around or how long we will have to wait to get the benefits that will probably not be as good as they are now. We as a nation have to stop they way we spend money and save and think about our future. I am not saying I have all the answers or how this will negatively affect the economy if we all cut back but we definelty need to rethink the way we spend money.
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