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In The News

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6/10/10 Teacher Training Study
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Study shows need for teacher training in personal finance.
  Few teachers believe they are adequately prepared to teach personal finance.
 
7/26/10 FICO Scores Drift Down
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FICO News Release
  A comparison of nationwide FICO Scores from 2010 indicates that consumer credit risk has increased over the past two years as the FICO Scores drifted down slightly on FICO's 300-850 score range.
 
3/17/10 18- to 24-year-olds most at risk for ID theft, survey finds
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Washington Post
 
 
   
   
 
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2/25/10 8 Keys to Financial Freedom - New Book Press Release
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  Dr. Jade K Brightly will release 8 KEYS to Financial Freedom: CREDIT SECRETS Everyone Should Know and Schools Should Teach, the first in a series of financial books designed to help consumers with ongoing financial crises preserve their credit.
 
2/24/10 Five Reasons To Switch To A Credit Union Credit Card
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Forbes.com
  Since the second part of a federal bill known as the CARD Act went into effect on Monday, credit cards have become a lot friendlier to consumers. Credit card companies are now prohibited from a long list of dirty business practices ranging from switching the date that a customer's bill is due to retroactively raising interest rates. (For more, check out "Credit Card Law Changes: What You Need to Know.") But because so many of the outlawed practices were also huge revenue generators for the comp
 
2/22/10 America Saves Week Message from FDIC Chairman
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FDIC Video
  >America Saves Week Message from FDIC Chairman
 
2/17/10 The State of College Savings Survey Finds Parent Confidence Crashing As They Rely on Loans
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College Savings Foundation
  According to a recent survey by the nonprofit College Savings Foundation, the confidence of parents in their ability to save for college dropped significantly over the past year . That's not entirely surprising, considering the economic climate. But what is surprising is that, of parents surveyed, a whopping 41% reported having saved nothing at all, and 28% reported having saved less than $5,000 per child.
 
2/9/10 Students need education, not ban on credit cards
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Orlando Sentinel
  Beginning later this month, 18 to 21 year olds can cross signing up for a credit card off their list of legal privileges. A new law mostly aimed at curbing the credit card companies' ability to take advantage of consumers also puts severe restrictions on young people who want to start building their credit.
 
2/1/10 Credit score damage control
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Visa's Practical Money Skills
  The formulas credit rating bureaus use to determine people's credit scores are proprietary, so it's difficult to quantify exactly how specific actions will impact your score. For the first time, however, FICO, the company whose credit scoring software is widely used by these bureaus, recently shared ranges for how many points people with certain credit problems stand to lose. This article shares information on the extent to which certain negative actions can impact your credit score.
 
2/1/10 Etiquette in the New Economy
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Visa's Practical Money Skills
  While reports suggest that our economy is on the rebound, unemployment is still high. Many of us are dealing with, or know someone facing a significant financial issue. It might be unemployment, foreclosure, or just some serious belt tightening.
 
1/28/10 Obama Pushes $10,000 College Tax Credit and Student Debt Relief
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Bloomberg.com
  President Barack Obama touted education among his top priorities in his first State of the Union address, proposing a $10,000 higher-education tax credit for families and debt forgiveness for people who have been repaying their college loans for at least 20 years.
 
1/25/10 Earning higher interest with a checking account
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Visa's Practical Money Matters
  One of the downsides of having a low rate of inflation is that interest rates for savings vehicles usually plummet at the same time, making it harder to build up a nest egg. As a way to draw in frustrated savers, some financial institutions have begun offering high-yield checking accounts that pay much higher interest than more traditional savings vehicles. This article describes how these accounts work and how to weigh their advantages  and restrictions  to decide if they're right for you
 
12/16/09 The 2010
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  The 2010 version of the Jump$tart Coalition "12 Principles Calendars" are now available. You can order them online (see link) or download a PDF version of the popular calendars and access lesson plans for teachers under About Us and Downloads.
 
12/14/09 Fla. college grad debt averages $18,621
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South Florida Business Journal
  Thirty-eight percent of seniors who graduated from Florida colleges or universities last year were in debt, with the average amount owed on student loans at $18,621. By comparison, the average national debt among college grads was $23,200, according to The Institute for College Access & Success Project on Student Debt report, which includes debt levels for the 50 states and District of Columbia and nearly 2,000 U.S. colleges and universities.
 
12/2/09 One-fifth of S. Fla. residents lack access to banking
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South Florida Business Journal
  More than one-fifth of South Florida households have no, or limited access, to banking services, according to a survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the U.S. Census Bureau. That compares favorably to the national average of more than one-in-four people who are unbanked or under-banked. The January survey with 47,000 responses considers households unbanked if they don't have a checking or savings account. Under-banked households have accounts, but they primarily use alternative
 
12/1/09 Card Firms Add Inactivity Fees to Slow Default Losses
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Bloomberg
  Credit card companies have begun charging customers for inactivity on their account. "If you're not thinking about the card, you might forget to pay the fee, and then you'll be facing another late fee on top of it," said Amy Schiffman, who was charged $19 for not using her Fifth Third Bancorp credit card. The fees are being implemented as credit card companies cope with mounting delinquencies.
 
11/30/09 Rebuilding after bankruptcy
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Visa's Practical Money Skills for Life
  Filing for bankruptcy can devastate your credit standing for years to come. But by establishing and following sound financial practices, you can accelerate the credit rebuilding process. In this Practical Money Matters piece, Mr. Alderman shares tips that can help people emerging from debt  or just beginning to create a credit history  to stay on track and build a healthy credit score.
 
11/30/09 Managing Your Money
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Andrew Bernstein
  This feature will touch upon three major factors in money management. The first factor is establishing a realistic monthly spending plan, also known as a budget. Why do you need a budget? A budget can assist you in identifying wasteful spending, it encourages saving, it helps prepare you for unexpected expenses and it can start you on your way to setting financial goals.
 
11/21/09 Recap of Financial Literacy Workshop
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Florida JumpStart Coalition
  Our first Financial Literacy Workshop for all partners, friends, and interested parties was held on Friday, November 6, at the Junior Achievement of Central Florida office in Orlando. Attendees heard presentations on: " National Jump$tart Coalition and Florida Jump$tart Coalition  Brenda Hubbard " The Need for Multi-channel Financial Education: What the Research Shows  Michael Gutter " Florida Saves Campaign - Managing in Tough Times, Small Steps to Health and Wealth  Michael Gutter " Junior
 
9/15/09 Florida Ranks No. 9 on Credit Risk Index
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South Florida Business Journal
  Florida was among the top three states in the nation to experience the largest quarterly increase in the TransUnion Credit Risk Index  up 2.67 percent, to 147.64 in the second quarter from 143.80 in the first quarter. Nationwide, Florida ranked ninth out of 50 states and the District of Columbia.
 
9/11/09 Atlanta Fed President Sees Slow Recovery for Economy
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Jacksonville.com
  Like many economists, Dennis Lockhart sees the current state of the U.S. economy as improving but still fragile. And the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta expects a slow recovery.
 
9/10/09 Understanding the basic facts about credit scores
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The Wall Street Journal
  Credit scores need to be understood since, as this article notes, there are many misconceptions about them. For example, they don't tell the whole story about a consumer's financial health; they just show a snapshot of debt at a specific moment. Karen Blumenthal writes that paying on time is the most important factor in a consumer's credit score; that vendors may score a consumer's credit even if the consumer didn't ask for it; and that consumers who purchase credit reports may not learn their actual rating
 
9/1/09 World's Largest Junior Financial Achievement Center Opens
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Florida Trend
  Buses will arrive in Coconut Creek at the world's largest Junior Achievement world center to deposit the first of an estimated 50,000 students who will visit annually for an education in hands-on financial decision-making.
 
4/9/08 Financial Literacy Still Declining among High School Seniors, Jump$tart Coalition's 2008 Survey Shows
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  While the financial literacy scores of the 2008 high school senior class rank lower than their 2006 peers measured in a national survey, financial literacy scores are higher among college students, the Jump$tart Coalition® for Personal Financial Literacy said today.
 
10/30/06 Jump$tart Survey and other personal financial literacy efforts

  Alan L. Sitkoff First Vice President of Wealth Management Financial Advisor Smith Barney 301 East Pine Street Ste. 1200 Orlando, FL 32801 NEWS STORY FOR N.N/PFN 585 (Source: DJ) 10/18 09:32 =DJ New Push To Erase Financial Illiteracy Among Youth SYMBOLS: N/DJN N/DJPF N/DJWB N/DJS N/DJSS N/DJWI N/EDU N/FCTV N/GEN By Thomas Kostigen When Warren Buffett was a teenager, he started a pinball-machine business. Later, he sold it and made a tidy profit before going on to bigger money-making endeavors. Always fascinated with money and profit, Buffett began his career in capitalism at a young age. A bold new movement reaching from the government to the financial-services industry has sprung up to teach kids about money matters. Here's why: fewer than 20% of investors are literate about important investment concepts. The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, or NAPFA, has a consumer education foundation to teach people about finance. It's designed so parents can teach their teenage children or bring them to seminars hosted by financial advisors across the country. David John Marotta, a financial planner in Charlottesville, Va., is hosting such a seminar this week to appeal to adults and teenage children "who have shown an interest in gaining the financial literacy that will make the difference between living in poverty or prosperity in the future." The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy says high school graduates possess very little knowledge about personal financial skills. School systems do not require that their graduates know and understand the financial concepts of earning, spending, saving and investing, it says, adding that parents often avoid talking to their children about subjects such as budgeting and saving, in part, as a result of their own failure to apply sound money-management principles at home. Maybe that's why the National Council on Economic Education teamed with Northwestern Mutual to launch TheMint.org, which promotes personal financial literacy. The site provides tools to help parents as well as educators teach children about sound money management and establish good money habits at home. NCEE surveys show that nearly half of the young people in America don't understand how to save and invest for retirement nor how to handle credit cards and don't know the difference between inflation and recession nor how government spending affects them. "If we fail to act now to improve economic literacy in this country, our children will be at risk for crippling personal debt, costly decisions at work and at home, and lack competitive skills in a fast-paced global economy," NCEE says. Indeed, with more and more of the U.S. labor force competing with China and India for jobs, it isn't such a bad thing to bring finance into the educational curriculum sooner. One of the basic lessons for young children that TheMint.org holds out is setting up four piggy banks instead of just one: a spending bank for money to be used soon, a saving bank for money to be used later, an investing bank for money that will grow on its own and a bank for donating money to help others. The lesson underlying this exercise is discipline. The Jump$tart Coalition has gone as far as to develop 12 principles - one for every month - "that every young person should know." They include "Don't expect something for nothing," "High returns equal high risks," "Pay yourself first," "Don't borrow what you can't repay," "Stay insured" and other more technical principles such as understanding the Rule of 72, as well as comparing interest rates. Class In Session You may be thinking what I am thinking, which is I'd rather see my kid out on the football field than in the classroom playing the stock market game that JumpStart also devised for students. But, there's a point to all this. Only 26% of individuals between the ages of 13 and 21 reported that their parents actively taught them how to manage money; the majority of college seniors have four or more credit cards, and the average college senior carries a balance of $3,000; one in every 10 college students has more than $7,000 of debt; and many college students pay more in interest on their credit cards than on their student loans. That may be why the personal savings rate of U.S. citizens in 2005 was negative 0.5%, marking the first time that the rate has been negative since the Great Depression year of 1933; or why in 2005 only 42% of workers or their spouses calculated the amount that they needed to save for retirement, down from 53% in 2000; or why the 2005 Retirement Confidence Survey found that a majority of workers believe that they are behind schedule on their retirement savings and that their debt is a problem; or why nearly 1.6 million individuals filed for bankruptcy in 2004; or why approximately 75 million individuals remain credit-challenged and unbanked. I hate to say it, but it may be that money needs to be afforded more time in the classroom. -Thomas Kostigen; 415-439-6400; AskNewswires@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires 10-18-06 0932ET Copyright (c) 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.- - 09 32 AM EDT 10-18-06 Best regards, Roger E. Busch Financial Advisor Financial Planning Specialist Second Vice President - Wealth Management SMITH BARNEY Smith Barney is a division of Citigroup Global Marketing, Inc. Click here to visit our website: http://www.smithbarney.com Registered Client Service Assistant: Barbara Mills Phone: 407-236-5000 or 800-342-6036 Fax: 407-236-5001 Email: roger.e.busch@smithbarney.com Postal address: 301 E. Pine St., Ste. 1200 Orlando, Florida 32801
 
4/21/06 Florida Specific Jump$tart Survey 2006
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4/13/06 MSNBC Reports on Jump$tart 2006 National Survey Resutls on Teens
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  Teens still lack financial literacy, survey finds On average, high school seniors answered correctly only 52.4 percent of questions about personal finance and economics, according to a nationwide survey released Wednesday http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12168872/from/ET/
 
4/1/04 2004 Survey National Results of High School Seniors Tested
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Jump$tart National, Dr. Lewis Mandell
  Survey Results of high school seniors tested on personal financial literacy.