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Why teach personal finance?

Here are the facts:
" Each year, over 1 million personal bankruptcies are filed. About 100,000 of those are by people under the age of 25.
" Very few schools require courses on personal finance. This lack of education makes students a prime target for financial companies. That's why credit card companies have flooded every college campus. Often a person's first lesson on financial education is provided by a salesperson.
" Because of compound interest, for ever day someone under the age of 30 waits to invest they must work an extra week before retiring.
" The financial world is getting more and more complicated and woe to those who don't keep up. 30 years ago, one could not borrow more than 80% of a home's value to borrow it. Now lenders will loan you over 100% of the value of a home. Credit reports once enjoyed the fairness of human evaluation. Now credit reports are all electronic and the computers don't care about your personal problems. In short, it's tougher now to have good credit. What's worse, credit reports are being pulled by the most unlikely people-most notably employers, using them as a character judgment tool.

Why use Getting Loaded?

Getting Loaded: A Complete Personal Finance Guide For Students and Young Professionals has many virtues that make it a great classroom text:
" It is written by a young author. I wrote Getting Loaded between the 22-24th years of my life. I am as close to my audience as a financial author can get. I reference our movies, our books and our songs. I make it fun.
" It is written for a young audience. The majority of investment books available today are targeted toward baby boomers, the demographic group that is widely believed to be the most concerned about personal finance. Getting Loaded is written specifically for young people in their late teens and twenties by a young person in that same age range.
" The book follows a non-linear format. Rather than 12 or 15 long chapters, the book is chopped into 50 short chapters. The 50 short chapters make it easy for teachers to skip around and customize the curriculum for their own classrooms.
" The book is well organized, with each chapter explaining the theory behind the concept at hand, as well as suggesting certain action steps on how students can improve their financial lives. What's more each chapter is summarized "In a Nutshell" the handy section at the end of each chapter.
" Author interaction. As a member of the Adopt an Author Program, I'm available to students and teachers who use the program in their classroom. Each teacher that enrolls receives a "secret" email address, which offers a more direct route to reach me. I'm also available for classroom conference calls and, schedule permitting, an in person appearance.

Suggested grade levels

For high school:

Getting Loaded is best suited for grades 11 and 12. While younger grades can benefit from it's information juniors and seniors will most closely relate to the content. They're working, they're driving, they're looking towards the next step in their lives, be it college or otherwise. Most important, the financial sharks are already circling, and the moment they graduate from the high school halls they will be bombarded with credit card offers.

For colleges:

Getting Loaded will find favor from all college level students both undergraduate and graduate. They have one foot in the financial real world, they working, renting apartments, paying off cars, taking out student loans, buying on credit and even filing tax returns. What's more the financial sharks are no longer circling - they're biting, with dozens of offers for credit cards.