CFPB FinEx Webinar: Money As You Grow
March 24, 2016
1:00 pm CT


Welcome and thank you for standing by. All participants will be able to listen only until the question and answer session of today's conference. At that time, if you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing Star then 1 and recording your first and last name.Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.I would now like to turn the call over to your host today, Ms. Irene Skricki. Ma'am you may begin.

Great, thank you very much and welcome everyone to this webinar, the CFPB Educational Exchange. We're delighted all of you could join us today and we have a great topic on helping parents and caregivers to help their kids learn about money and finances. So I'll finish a few background things about FINEX as we usually do. First of all a disclaimer, this presentation does not constitute legal or other guidance and all opinions stated are those of the presenter.	I'm trying to get my slides to advance here. As most of you know, I'm with the Consumer Protection Bureau which is a federal agency that helps consumer finance markets work better. Work by making rules more effective consistently and fairly enforcing those rules and empowering consumers to take control of their economic lives. And it's on that empowering consumer side that those of us on this call are working as part of our educating consumers efforts. And just to note, so within the Bureau the part of the Bureau that is consumer facing is the Consumer Education and Engagement Division. We are one unit within that division, the Office of Financial Education.	The others work with older Americans, with military service members, with students, with the economically vulnerable. And we all work together to try improve consumers financial decision making.	And so you've noticed in some of our previous webinars we have featured resources and tools from all of these different offices. Just a word about the CFPB Financial Education Exchange, I know many of you on this call have been part of this for a while. But we have started reaching out more broadly to let other stakeholders know about these calls so not everyone on the call may be familiar with this. But essentially this is a way for financial educators to learn about CFPB tools and resources that they can use. And also to give feedback to us back at the Bureau about effective practices, things that are working, challenges you are facing.	And so we encourage anyone on this call who has not yet signed up for FINEX to do so. You can email the inbox cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov and just say sign me up. And you will get ongoing announcements of calls like this if you aren't already getting those. I just want to say a few words about FINEX because we’re coming up on the one year anniversary just so those of you who have been part of this can know where we are. We have almost 1400 financial educators signed up for CFPB FINEX.

We've been having regional convening’s around the country. We send monthly e-newsletters. We have postings on LinkedIn to keep people updated on what's happening. And we've also had ten monthly webinars so far. This is the eleventh. And they're all listed there on the screen. And all of them with the exception of one, the students' one, are actually posted on the website, the FINEX website. So you can listen to those webinars if you were not able to be on them originally. So that is a resource that we offer.	I'll just give you a quick screenshot. This is the resources for financial educators on our FINEX webpage. It's on consumer finance.gov. The url is consumerfinance.gov/adults-financial-education.

And that's where you can see an inventory of all our tools and resources. You can see all the previous webinars and links to all our different tools. Just quickly, this is the resource inventory up on the screen which lists all the different tools and resources the Bureau has, research reports, things that educators can use, things that consumers can use.

We actually just updated it about a week ago from the one that had been put up almost a year ago. So if anyone hasn't seen it recently, it has some new things in it there for you to access.

And then the last thing I just wanted to mention is our LinkedIn discussion group. You can get to it actually from the FINEX website. This is a social media site where we put things up but you are also all welcome to put up your own tools and resources. Post questions, see reports from other organizations.

We have a number of people who post regularly on that. So you are all welcome to join that as well. So that's just a little bit of background.

Again, if you haven't joined FINEX, please consider doing so. It's free. It's open to anyone. CFPB_FINEX@cfpb.gov.

So that's just a quick intro. I will in just a second I will turn it over to our speaker today, my colleague Laura Schlachtmeyer from the Financial Education Office also.

Just a quick note, we will have formal questions and answers at the end when you can actually ask your question over the phone line. We'll tell you how to do that when we reach that point.

But if you have any kind of clarifying questions as we're going that you want to ask, if you're on your WebEx screen, there is a Q&A little box or button, it depends on how you have your screen setup. And if you send a question into that, I will be monitoring this while Laura speaks. So if there's anything you need answered immediately I will try to keep an eye on that. And then also during the question and answer session, you can both send in questions that way or again, we'll tell you how to do it via the phone line.

So that's all the background. Hopefully everyone's ready now to learn about our topic of the day. And I will now turn it over to Laura. So thank you so much, Laura, we are delighted to have you with us. And this is an exciting new resource that the Bureau has been making available and we're eager to hear about it.

Great. Thanks Irene, I really appreciate it and I appreciate being your 11th webinar in your ongoing series. I am Laura Schlachtmeyer. I am a Content Specialist within the Office of Financial Education here at the CFPB.

And today I'm going to talk a little bit about the power of parents and caregivers as an influence on their children's financial futures. I'm going to step through some of the recent research that came out of the CFPB that helps us understand how children develop and how they form the habits, and skills, and behaviors that they'll use later in their financial lives.

And finally I'm going to show you how we've brought all this together into a fresh version of the popular website, Money as You Grow in its new home with us here at the CFPB. And as Irene said, we will have lots of time for questions and answers.

So let's start just a little bit by talking about the important role that parents and caregivers have. There are some 35 million families in the United States with children under 18. That's about 30% of all US households.

And some of these may be parents in families that you're working with, some of them might have the question in the back of their minds, how is my own financial situation affecting my kids? And how can I help them grow into financial capable adults. And I'm hoping that this helps you get some helpful answers.

So probably just to begin, it probably makes intuitive sense that parents and caregivers have such a key role. We heard that again and again in the research into adult financial wellbeing which was one of the topics of previous webinars here.

People told us that the lessons they absorbed as children, what to do with money sometimes what not to do with money, became part of their financial lives. So one of the key ideas to keep in mind here that children really do pickup lessons from their parents whether the parents are intentionally teaching them or not.

And then there are research findings that back this up. At all stages of development, parents do have a role to play. And that role shifts as the children grow because how the child is developing changes. So we think it's helpful to give parents information on how to help kids with the different stages of development.

I'm going to start here with a broad view of how children develop their financial lives and then we'll dig a little bit deeper as we go. All right so it all comes back to the goal that we all aim for which is financial wellbeing.

And we find that people with high levels of financial wellbeing have a few key tendencies and skills. They practice effective routine money management. They are skilled at financial planning and setting goals. They conduct financial research and seek out knowledge. And then they follow through on those decisions. So these extend beyond simple financial knowledge. They're more about how you tend to think, and feel, and act. And what habits you've developed to take care of repetitive tasks and how you approach new situations.

So in this slide we're looking at the three components of essentially how people build those habits and skills and abilities. So this is a pretty broad view of childhood financial development. Children ideally have robust development in all three areas, executive function, financial habits and norms, and financial skills and decision making.

Let's just define those a little bit. Executive function is not a term that we probably use a lot in financial education. It's something that comes up from developmental psychology. And that is a bundle of traits that have to do with self-control, and memory, and problem solving.

So you can see probably how those start to support future financial behavior in terms of the things that you need to do to plan ahead, to stick to your plans, and just generally to be good at goal setting and looking ahead.

When we look at financial habits and norms, we're talking about just things that you - values and demonstrating what is sort of normal financial behavior. Things like resisting ads or promotions, making tradeoffs, earning and spending, being fair, carrying through on intentions, the shortcuts and habits that you get into every day when you manage your financial life.

And then finally the third stage of financial skills is decision making that's starts to bring in the ideas of seeking out knowledge, doing research, making careful tradeoffs and making sure that you have the pieces in place to make a rational decision.

And for the most part, we can think of this development happening in three key stages. So what we're suggesting is that in early childhood, the foundation of executive function skills is formed. And later children start to develop habits, and norms and values. And finally in the teen years, we add the rational, thorough thought processes for decision making.

And this is not to say that there's only one shot at developing in any of these areas. Executive function is really continually developing. And certainly even young children can practice rational tradeoffs as they think. But we can think of each stage of childhood of having a primary focus. And the others are present although they are secondary.

So we can connect childhood development to the world around us. We start to see the influences and sources of information that come into play. Family life is pretty constant but you can see how it needs to change and evolve as other influences kick in from schools, and from the community, and from the child's own experience.

Now I'm going to just dig a little bit deeper into each key focus of the developmental stages. And let's just remember that early childhood I'm really talking about preschool, ages 3 to 5. And here on this slide you can see some of the key skills that fall into executive functions so starting with that.

And to define that, again, we mean ability to stay focused in the face of distraction, to adjust when something changes. To think flexibly, come up with multiple solutions to a problem. To persist in solving that problem and to plan ahead and to line up things that you anticipate needing in the future.

So children can demonstrate these traits in playing alone or with others and in managing resources other than money like negotiating for treats, negotiating for bedtime. So you might also see some early formation of values for example in attitudes about saving or spending.

And again, we're not usually talking about money since that isn't something of value to them at this age. More likely it's to be things that are valuable to children like toys, or playtime, or treats. And of course children are certainly developing some knowledge and skills like counting and sorting that are precursors to more complicated math which they will need later.

Now looking into the stage of middle childhood and again remember this is about ages 6 to 12. And obviously with all these age ranges there's going to be individual variation. Kids in this age range of course develop a lot so these skills can be demonstrated at different levels for younger and older ends of this range.

But really the primary focus is here in this middle column what we're calling financial habits and norms. And by this we mean the values and attitudes absorbed from the world around them so positive attitudes towards saving and self-control.

Positive habits like planning ahead. Making decisions that are aligned with things that you think are important and having the child feel self-confident and self-efficacious about actually doing those things that are set forward.

At this age, kids are just starting to notice the financial world and planning for how they might use their own money and things that appear in the environment. They might start to notice banks, and credit cards, and advertising, and promotions.

And certainly they'll notice easy ways to spend money like inside their favorite apps and games. And that's where the development of habits and values can really bolster them against some of these impulses.

And finally let's look at the teen years. Let's start with what we think is key here at the far right-hand side of the table. At this time, teens are really starting to use -- earn and use -- their own money for the things that they want.

So think about what they do when they're faced with a new kind of decision. Do they grasp the information that they need to know? Do they know where to find that information? Can they manage their own money toward a goal that they set?

And can they think about where information is coming from and how to evaluate it and think it through? So these other executive functions and financial habits and norms are still continuing to develop while they're practicing these rational tradeoffs. 

All right so now that we've seen just a little bit about what children are going through, it's time to ask parents how parents can help. And that's why we've updated this popular Money as You Grow site and integrated it into the tools that CFPB provides to the public. So I'm excited to introduce you to this new destination.

It came from -- Money as You Grow -- came from the President's Advisory Council. And you might already be familiar with this site. If you've seen it before, it's been in existence since about 2012 for a number of years now.

It was developed out of the President's Advisory Council and it was spearheaded by the financial journalist Beth Kobliner. It was clearly something that people were ready for.

It had 20 helpful tips for kids of all ages. And it gained a lot of popularity among parents especially on Pinterest and other social media. And one million hits is pretty impressive for a financial education site I have to say. Yes.

So the CFPB has been working in collaboration with the original Money as You Grow team. And the result is a new home for the site on consumerfinance.gov/moneyasyougrow. And the site continues this very practical approach to the activities and conversation starters. And then puts it into the framework that we just discussed.

So when you visit the site as I really hope you do you will see that it's structured around the developmental stages we just walked through, early childhood, middle childhood and the teen years and young adulthood.

So you begin probably by choosing one of the age ranges. And then immediately you'll see featured activities that you could download and start using or share with your parents so that they could start using them to develop and enhance the sets of skills that we talked about.

So for early childhood for example, we've got a simple sorting activity. So you can take this activity, print it out at your office or at home. And then you can use it teach either the basics of the coins that we use or use it more creatively to sort by many features that coins have like the pictures that are on coins, or the shape of the coins, or the years of their minting, or other things that you and your child can think up to practice that activity of sorting.

The one for middle childhood, one of the featured activities we've got there is a Bingo game that you can take on the road with you in the car, on public transportation when you're around your neighborhood or in a new area. And just spot things around you like a bank, or a school, or a hospital, or a park.

And that should start some conversations with your child about how they're supported. How money flows through the community that you're in whether it's public financing, or private money, or a nonprofit organization. So that is a way to start that conversation with the Bingo game.

And then for the teen years, we start to encourage fact finding and comparison shopping. And so one activity we've got here is a family job chart where your teen can find out about the jobs held by family members, ask some questions about those and of other adults in the community around them.

By jobs you mean paid employment as opposed to…

Correct.

Within the household job.

Right so I'm talking about the employment. As teenagers start to think about careers and job choices they might make and to look at the situations around them, see what they are interested in. How to compare among them the skills and training that are needed, things like that. And that activity chart could help them carryout that activity.

So these are just a few of things I'm just mentioning that you can use that are tied back to the way that kids develop. And of course if you get very enthusiastic about these, you and the people that you work with, you can spread the word and share them on your own social media network.

Within each of the age ranges you'll also see beyond just those highlighted activities that we looked at, you'll find a whole wealth of conversation starters. And the way those are structured, I'll show you right here on the page. Just showing you one example and this one's for the teen years.

It's important at this stage for money to be very practical. So we have some tested and proven tips in this case for talking to your teenager about the realities of a paycheck like the fact that taxes are taken out. So these are just a few straightforward tips on how to introduce the idea of tax withholding, the function of taxes, the progressive tax structure, other paycheck deductions.

And then behind each of the statements that you see below there, you'll find similar age appropriate discussions for how to walk through these topics and make them real for teenagers.

Okay so what we see on the screen for those of you in the WebEx that's the dropdown for that first button.

Right.

There's a similar dropdown for each of the terms below?

Exactly, you can see the Show and Hide there on the right-hand side and you could probably be looking at the site right now. But Show and Hide will show you these conversation starters and the activities that you can do beneath them.

And then finally if you've covered all of this and you still want to dig deeper, for parents and caregivers who want to go further and have a little bit more context, we do provide this background on why we think this is important and why we think it works.

So it's something that we hope helps parents no matter where they get ideas for activities and money conversations. Even if they're not using the activities that are presented here, if they're pulling them from other sources, that's great.

I think having this framework will help them make those make sense and help them be more effective for their kids. There's really no right or wrong way when it comes to, you know, making these kinds of choices, having these conversations, raising your family.

So we have our suggested activities to make this easier. But the individual activities may in fact be less important than understanding what's behind them, what the stages are. So we hope that when parents find other money activities in other places that this framework helps them see how to approach it.

I think that armed with this information parents can find it easier, a little bit more comfortable to talk with their kids because the child will be developmentally ready for what they're talking about.

So if I could just leave you with a couple of ideas to keep in mind that you can share with parents who are hoping to raise their financial capable kids, here's just a couple of thoughts.

First and one of the most important things is that parents are teaching their kids about money on purpose or not. Kids are listening and absorbing and that's what makes parents such a key influence.

Secondly, parents really don't have to have financial expertise or deep knowledge to be a good teacher. I didn't talk a lot about teaching kids money vocabulary or higher math calculations. Parents can do a lot with just developing a foundation of the skills and having shortcuts and attitudes that will serve their kids really well.

And finally I think one powerful thing that parents and caregivers can do is simply to think out loud. This is a way to think of having a money conversation and it's probably an easier way to think about having a money conversation.

When you give your thoughts, and plans, and intentions words, your kids can absorb them better. So things that are invisible from how you go about making a grocery list, to how you save up for a family trip those become real and intentional when you put them into words. So try to just to think out loud.

And that takes us through the content of the website and the framework there. And I would be delighted to take questions.

Great. Thank you very much Laura. That was terrific and as always anyone who is a parent or works with kids, or has relatives this is always thought provoking thinking about one's own kind of role with kids as they develop.

So what we're going to do now is take questions. So again you can either do the Q&A. You can type questions into the Q&A box, a little spot on your screen if you can find it. And then also, Operator, can you tell us how to ask questions via the phone?

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing Star then 1. You must record your first and last name to ask your question.

And to withdraw your question, you may press Star then 2. Once again, if you would like to ask a question at this time, please press Star then 1 and record your first and last name; one moment please.

Great so again Star-1 for those of you who prefer the voice method or you can type in. And while we're letting some of those queue up, Laura, this, as you know, FINEX network is primarily financial educators working with clients. And so we always say all of these resources while some like these may be direct to consumer can be useful too.

Financial educators who may have either clients with kids who are interested in talking about money in some cases, clients who may have kids who are part of the whole money equation in terms of how you're budgeting for your kid or things they ask for or things they need.

And also I think for any folks who do any programs with youth for example. I think a lot of these would be applicable. Can you tell us more about how someone might use some of these things in those contexts? That would be helpful.

And then I see we're starting to get some email questions which is great.

Yes. I mean I think starting with the featured activities is a good way to go. I think those are things that you can download and sort of have on hand for the children at different ages and see how that works.

And then there are also in addition to the primary content there, you've got featured activities and you've got those conversation starters. You'll also find on the site there are a number of other resources there.

There's a curriculum for example put out by our colleagues at the FDIC called Money Smart that has parents and caregivers guides. And down in that section, you'll see a lot of additional links that could you give more ideas for activities for parents in that situation.

Great. Okay before I turn to the phone, I have quick and easy emailed ones here. I like these very concrete things. Someone wanted to make sure they had the website address correct.

It is, yes, www.consumerfinance.gov, consumer finance all one word. And that's where you'll find Money as You Grow along with all the different FINEX resources and other information about the Bureau.

And then my personal favorite question, how again does one sign up for CFPB FINEX? I like that question as I'm always trying to get people to join. And the email is cfpb_FINEX -- f-i-n-e-x -- @cfpb.gov. So cfpb_FINEX@cfpb.gov.

And let me just read one of these, we have a couple more coming in and then we will go to voice in a second for those of you who have dialed in or have called in. Can you please explain more information about the college scorecard link which was kind of briefly up there?

Yes the college scorecard is one of the featured activities that we've selected for the teenage years. And what's nice about it it's a tool developed by the Department of Education. And one of those tools that I think can help in the comparison shopping set of skills that I think teenagers are developing.

Obviously kids who are looking ahead to college want to collect information to compare across their different options. And the college scorecard let's you select on a number of variables like the major that you want to select and the area of the country that you'd like to be in and the size of the college.

So it helps you sort of see the set of information that's available to you. And then you can start to compare and contrast among them. And I think that reinforces the skill that we're talking about. Even if college is many years away, it's still something that you can use to practice those comparison skills.

Great. And this may be a good time just to mention too that the CFPB also has an entire Paying for College section on our website, again consumerfinance.gov.

There is a whole section called Paying for College that includes both some information on different types of student loans and how to kind of compare and understand loans and then also a whole very popular section on student debt repayment and some of the challenges and options there. I think that, unfortunately has been very popular just because of the struggles a lot of people have with student debt and student loans they've taken on.

Great, there's a few more emailed questions but let me turn to voice for a minute. Do we have any phone questions?

At this time ma'am I'm showing no questions.

Okay, excellent. Well we have, this is definitely more of a typing than a talking crowd. So here's another question, I was wondering if there are any materials I can use to present at a financial educational event or a particular website, I guess, that would provide something that you could use in that context.

I mean you're obviously welcome to share everything that's on the website on this Money as You Grow, consumerfinance.gov/money as you grow. You're more than welcome to share that out. There's a supporting report that you can find on let's see the supporting report on adult financial wellbeing is also on consumerfinance.gov.

And there is a -- in the slides -- there is a link to an academic report on childhood development that you might also be able to present, or talk about, or handout.

Yes that was a paper describing the research underlying some of this work. We will have some other things coming out on that ourselves. But there was a paper in the Journal of Consumer Affairs.

Yes, you can find that in the slides and you can also find it on the website. There are also some short brochures or digests for parents within each one of those age ranges. So those are sort of two-sided brochures that combine a little bit of everything that the website is trying to do.

So it does feature some activities and conversation starters and some of the developmental sort of rational. So you can see that there are three handouts that might be helpful for you at the event.

And where do they actually show up on the page?

They show up underneath that expandable section that we looked at the Show-Hide conversation sections. Underneath that section you'll see there's a few more links to the brochure and additional…

Okay so we can't actually see it on this slide, okay.

I haven't put it in the slide. But when you do go to the website you'll see there's more to it than just what I've put on the slide.

There's a limit to how much you can fit on a single PowerPoint slide.

Yes.

Okay let me see. We have another; will a copy of the slide email be available online? We sometimes do that. You can email the CFPB FINEX inbox and I think we could make that available.

Yes.

And then the slides, because this is recorded, once this goes up online in a couple of weeks, you'll actually be able to go through and see all these slides. Any material you didn't see as we went through them today you'll be able to see on the video of this webinar.

And actually here's an excellent idea, Laura, a question or a comment from someone. Will there be a link to CFPB Paying for College as part of the teen section Money as You Grow.

There is one. It should be there right now. And it does, I mean I feel like the Paying for College is a very practical tool for actually going through the process of choosing a college and a student loan.

And that's a little bit more advanced that what we're hoping for the teenagers' skills to develop. The teenager section is really for those skills to be practiced. But certainly since it has practical application, you should be able to find the Paying for College right there.

Right so in other words, you're kind of learning a bit about it, and practicing and thinking about some of these things like jobs and college. And the Money as You Grow when you're ready to actually go forth and get a loan and go to college, you move onto Paying for College. And then when you end up with loans, if it turns out you have trouble repaying, we have the student loan payment.

We have that for you as well.

Great. And so is that easy to find on the page?

It should be in that bottom section, again, under related links.

Okay. Operator, do we have any phone questions now?

At this time ma'am, I'm showing no questions.

I thought not as we've had, as I said, a very written question oriented group. Another question about the PowerPoint slides. Sure, if you email CFPB_FINEX@cfpb.gov I can send them out or again, you will see them on the recording.

It usually takes about a week or two for us to get the recording up on the FINEX website where you will see recordings of all previous webinars except the student debt one actually was not recorded.

All right last chance for questions. We may be winding down here but -- sorry -- we're laughing because we just read a question, can you say the email a little more slowly please. I know I talk fast, my apologies.

Okay, slowly, CFPB_FINEX or f-i-n-e-x @cfpb.gov so that's CFPB_FINEX@cfpb.gov. I find it very hard…

It's a lot of CFPBs.

It's sort of double CFPB. CFPB_FINEX@cfpb.gov. Thank you. Again, I appreciate the question because I'm always eager to have more people join the group and participate in calls like these.

So I think and let me just check, oh look somebody sent it out, thank you. One last, just one final check for phone questions Operator.

At this time ma'am I'm showing no questions.

Great, okay. Well this has been great. And thank you very much. I hope all of you find this useful. I hope you'll be able to use this with clients or yourself.

I think a lot of financial educators are also parents, or aunts, or uncles, or have other ways to use those skills. I find this very useful in discussing money with my own kids. So really appreciate, Laura, your speaking. And thank you everybody again.

Finally for FINEX, just a quick note, I think we just settled on our next topic for our monthly call which is always the fourth Thursday of the month from 2:00 to 3:00 Eastern and it will actually be again looking at sort of kids' issues with our K-12 that curriculum review guide.

There's a resource the Bureau has put out to help people evaluate different financial education curriculums they can use with kids in different settings. So that will be at our next webinar.

We have a number of interesting topics coming up over the summer as we have some new research that's going to be released on a number of topics so stay tuned for all that.

So thank you very much everybody, we really appreciate it. And I hope you can come to the next webinar, thanks very much.

This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.


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