Send Your Kids to Financial Camp, Where They’ll Learn That Savings Accounts Aren’t Worth Much
You earn money through investments and entrepreneurship.
A few weeks ago I shared a NYMag article about Adulting School, where twenty- and thirtysomethings can go to learn more about emergency funds and time management:
But what if you didn’t have to wait until Adulting School to learn about personal finance? Bloomberg Businessweek shares the story of a different kind of finance camp, designed for significantly younger audiences:
This Capitalism Camp Makes Your Kid’s Lemonade Stand Look Downright Childish
At Future Millionaires week in Arlington, [Chuchi Arevalo] started camp as he always does, by destroying a time-honored financial tradition: a child’s first bank savings account. In the era of quantitative easing, he said, historically low interest rates make stocks a better long-term investment. Somehow, Arevalo’s almost pathological inability to speak at a kid’s level came off as charming. He asked questions that forced them to do math in their heads and casually deployed microeconomics terms like price elasticity of demand. At one point, he put IRS Form 1040 on the screen and explained it line by line.
Although Bloomberg headlines this as “capitalism camp for kindergarteners,” Arevalo’s Spark Business Academy includes camps for all grade levels, and teaches children that real money is made through investments and entrepreneurship. He draws attendees primarily from wealthy DC families, although he is expanding his camps into NYC as well.
Whytni Kernodle, a lawyer who spent almost $1,000 for her two sons to attend the camp, told me that she’d mentioned Future Millionaires to a Parisian friend — who teased her that in France, such a thing would be picketed. But Kernodle said Arevalo provided an experience her sons didn’t get from their other summer pursuits, which included trips to Morocco, Ghana, and a camp in Malibu, Calif.
You’ll want to read the whole thing, if only to note the disparity between Adulting School’s “try to save up a small emergency fund” and Future Millionaires’ “forget savings accounts, let’s talk quantitative easing.”
If you’re a kid whose parents have money, you can go to a camp to learn how to make even more money. If you’re an adult who might be “middle class,” you can go to a camp to learn how to save a little bit of your money.
Who else wishes the two lesson plans were switched?
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