re: What are some very basic tips/advice to give to poor/uneducated people re: money

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Opening a checking account and making a budget.

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Yep! Just being organized and having a plan.

I think the absolute most important thing you can do for these folks is to demonstrate that there is a better way, that they are not stuck, and that there is hope. It is not impossible to pay bills and have some savings for when the transmission on their car needs service.

I talk about this shite all the time. Basic personal finance should be a required course for every high school and college student in the country.

It's infinitely more valuable than 99% of the shite they teach you.

Advice I give people I know:
- Savings is not an option. Pay yourself automatically first.
- If you can't afford to pay off a credit card bill completely every month, don't have one.
- Never take a payday loan.
- Max out your Roth IRA. It's more important than anything you could possibly purchase in a given month.
- Take advantage of any company 401K match. Free money. If you make enough, max out your 401K. I started at 10 percent and just when up a percent or so a month until I maxed mine out and never really felt the pain or noticed.
- If you're not into investing, go with a cheap discount brokerage like Vanguard and buy VO and dollar cost average into it every month. If at the end of the month it falls below its 10 month SMA, sell it and buy TLT. If TLT is below it's 10 month SMA buy IEF. (There are way more sophisticated momentum systems but that's probably the easiest one to explain and avoid 50 percent losses like in 2008).
- Never buy a new car...ever. Biggest rip off there is. Buy one a year old for 70 percent of the cost.


And maybe my number 1 tip: EVERYTHING is negotiable. Always ask for a better deal or lower price. If the answer is no, you've lost nothing. People would be shocked how often I get things reduced simply by asking. It's not a big hassel usually.

Shop around. Insurance, cable, internet, electric providers, airline tickets, products. People waste so much money by not doing a little research.

I would talk mostly about how debt is a tool, and that tool can frick you over. Its like fire, you play with fire you can get burned but you probably can't live without it.

Same is true with debt. Its easy to get burnt, but the trick is to get debt to work for you. And its imperative to be able to have this skill, otherwise you will just end up in debt hell.

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Most of this does not apply to 90% of his target audience, doesn't mean it's not good advice though.

If you are talking about doing this for actual poor people, everything needs to be based on cash for a significant amount of time. To people that are on this board TMV is a simple concept, but people making <$30,000 a year don't even understand credit. Credit to them means I don't have to pay for it until I can. They don't understand the concept of accruing interest.

IMO, the point of a class for truly poor people should be eliminating debt and relying on the amount of cash you have and learning to save. Unfortunately, using debt as a tool is a pretty advanced tactic for the majority of Americans.

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You're right. I was off topic and more talking about tips I give to peers/young family members, etc., which are not his demographic.

For his target audience, what may be even more important than eliminating debt is not getting into it to begin with. It's a hell of a lot easier to avoid borrowing $1,000 to buy some shite you don't truly need than it is to pay off that money at $25 a month and 20% interest.

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For his target audience, what may be even more important than eliminating debt is not getting into it to begin with. It's a hell of a lot easier to avoid borrowing $1,000 to buy some shite you don't truly need than it is to pay off that money at $25 a month and 20% interest.

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You're right, but an overwhelming majority is already going to be in debt so if I were trying to create a "lesson plan" for these classes I would spend more time trying to find a way to get people out of debt for the sole reason that it would be more helpful to these particular students.

No one will participate in your program voluntarily if your lessons are condescending, fault-finding, and shaming. So approach any of your lesson planning from a position of mutual respect and compassion; basic human dignity, ya know? These lessons also must be entertaining and concrete--your audience will need physical examples & practice, not just talk and theory.

It's easy to sit in a position of relative affluence and blame the struggling for their own failure--but a fair bit of financial success indeed involves luck. Continued good health, no accidents, decent affordable housing, a stable employer--those are things beyond an individual's control and when they break against you, your financial health can be derailed.

So many ppl who struggle lack basic conceptual math skills. Compound interest is way too advanced: I'd focus on estimating, unit cost to help with bulk purchasing/household consumables, and controlling costs (esp in the grocery realm). There are great model curricula for teaching consumer math to students with disabilities, which you might find useful (google it) as a starting point.

Poor financial decision making is not just a factor of ignorance; it's also driven by an inability to delay gratification. Affluent people can treat themselves and not blow the budget, while someone living close to the bone is supposed to have superhuman control over wants vs. needs?

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On a similar note, I have no idea why schools haven't started teaching courses on basic real world financial principles.

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I'm about to graduate with a finance degree and i took ONE elective that was truly "real world"

it's a problem

Why nonprofit?

Get in with local govt
Have judges send people to your class that are in court for things like bad checks, fraud, even theft
Profit

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about to graduate with a finance degree and i took ONE elective that was truly "real world" 

it's a problem

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Yep. I learned more about personal finance my first year in college on my own than the rest of my life combined.

Also I discovered this place whick sparked my interest and led me to do my own research on things like investing, real estate, etc.

I repeatedly tell people all the time, I have high school buddies who have called me after college graduation and asked how to setup cable, internet, electricity, retirement accounts, etc.

These are 24-25 yo men with college degrees.

And that's what is in your workforce