BERLIN — A bumper crop of fiscally responsible students emerged from Stephen Decatur last week with certifications after completing a rigorous financial literacy course at the Berlin high school.
More than 40 Stephen Decatur High School students last week received their official certifications after completing the financial literacy program provided by EverFi Inc. and sponsored by the Bank of Ocean City. The newly certified students completed the EverFi web-based learning program as part of a statewide initiative to teach financial literacy.
“It teaches them everything from opening a bank account to balancing a checkbook to buying a car or getting a mortgage,” Bank of Ocean City Vice President Earl Conley said. “It teaches them about stocks and investments and through virtual reality, they can actually walk onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. It’s really the whole gamut.”
Through the EverFi program, the students became certified in over 600 topics in financial education and became better financially informed citizens. The Bank of Ocean City contracted to EverFi to bring the interactive financial management program to the Decatur students at no cost to the school.
“Financial literacy is now required, but a lot of schools don’t have the funding for the program,” he said. “We spend around $3,000 a year to provide the program. Another problem is it’s all computer-based and there aren’t always enough computers to go around.”
The 10-unit course offers six hours of programming aimed at teaching, assessing and certifying students in a variety of financial topics including credit scores, insurance, credit cards, student loans, mortgages, taxes, stocks, savings, 401ks and other critical concepts.
During last week’s certification presentation, Decatur Principal Tom Zimmer praised the students for completing the rigorous course and told them its lessons will serve them well as they progress through life. He cited an example where less financially literate students can fall into fiscal traps.
“Intelligent investments lead to good things and I’m glad you’ve completed this program,” he said. “When I went to college, I went to the mailbox and it was full of free credit card offers from Visa and Mastercard. They didn’t tell me a month later they would be sending a bill.”
Zimmer said with most of the students who completed the course being juniors and seniors, they will soon start to learn some of life’s financial realities.
“It will only benefit you,” he said. “You are getting to the point in your life where things will start coming at you quickly.”
Conley also praised the students for completing the course and earning the certificates. He also said as a banker he routinely sees individuals with muddy financial futures.
“Hopefully, everybody took a little something away from this course,” he said. “As a commercial lender, we see everybody’s financials. A lot of times you open them up and say ‘whoa, maybe they should have taken the EverFi class.”
Conley said the lessons were comprehensive and covered all facets of finance and living within ones means. He illustrated the point by telling the students to separate their needs from their wants.
“The important thing in this is budgeting,” he said. “If you make X, you can’t spend more than X. You and I can’t live like the federal government. If you run up $15,000 in credit card debt, you can make the minimum payment for 25 or 30 years and never pay it off.”
Decatur teacher Kurt Marx implemented the EverFi program a few years back after earlier attempts at financial literacy courses stalled. In the years since, he said about 350 students had completed the program.
“If you make good decisions when you’re young, your life will be easier when you get old,” he said. “You can’t count on Social Security and you can’t count on a pension. You will have to take care of you. It’s great that you have all of this information, now you just have to use it.”
For their part, the Decatur students said the lessons they learned through the EverFi program will serve them well going forward.
“These are very important lessons,” said Brandon Ali. “They teach you how to handle problems in the real world. We take classes like English and Algebra and they are important too, but this course really gets us ready to start thinking about our future. These are lessons we can use for the rest of our lives.”
For Sierra Dacre, the EverFi program will help her prepare for the next major milestone in her life.
“I think the biggest takeaway for me was the whole section about student loans,” she said. “As a senior, I am now going through that process and there was a whole lesson just on student aid and it was very helpful.”
Dacre said another unit that really stuck with her was the section of the program dealing with home finances and mortgages.
“There was another whole section on mortgages that was really helpful,” she said. “It seems so complicated, but the program broke it down and simplified it. I think I will benefit from that.”
