For Educators

At MoneyTrack, our goal is to teach viewers how to invest wisely and avoid common and dangerous financial scams. To do that, we skip lectures from talking heads and provide real-life examples of both the successes and pitfalls of investing. Our episodes often highlight smart, self-made investors like Earl Crawley, a parking-lot attendant worth $1 million in investments, and Damon Williams, a 14-year-old who has already amassed $50,000 in high-quality stocks. Then we talk with distinguished guest experts like economist Ben Stein and the founder of the Index Fund, John Bogle, to build on these investors’ stories and teach viewers how these successes were achieved. The hazards of investing are also covered in the Scam Alerts in each episode.

Because we’re dedicated to financial education, we want to provide teachers with the resources they need to educate their students in a smart yet down-to-earth manner. One example of how our advice is used: For the Investor Protection Trust’s initiative “Investor Education @ your library,” in partnership with the American Library Association, episodes of MoneyTrack are shown at public libraries nationwide as part of investor-education seminars. In addition to the educational resources we recommend (below), MoneyTrack segments can also be made available for use in financial-education courses at schools, colleges and universities.

Education Resources:

The Basics of Saving and Investing: Investor Education 2020 is an investor education and protection teaching guide. It was developed for high school teachers, however its content lends itself to all types of investor education and protection initiatives including college courses, work place education, after school programs, seminars for adults and seniors, etc. The Basics can also be used by individuals as a “do-it-yourself” course.

Investor Protection Trust: The Investor Protection Trust provides independent, objective information to help consumers make informed investment decisions. Founded in 1993 as part of a multi-state settlement to resolve charges of misconduct, IPT serves as an independent source of non-commercial investor education materials.

Jump$tart Coalition: Jump$tart is a national coalition of organizations dedicated to improving the financial literacy of kindergarten through college-age youth by providing advocacy, research, standards and educational resources. Jump$tart strives to prepare youth for life-long successful financial decision-making.

Junior Achievement: JA Worldwide (Junior Achievement) is the world’s largest organization dedicated to educating students about work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs. Junior Achievement programs help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it, how to create jobs which make their communities more robust, and how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace. Students put these lessons into action, and help strengthen their communities.