A speaker on personal finances used the oldest trick in the book to get Terry Fox students to pay attention to his money-management message.
He gave away cash.
James Cunningham, a speaker and stand-up comic who has tailored a program on financial literacy for high school students, gave away loonies, $5 bills and even a $50 bill to get kids to buy into his message that kids need money smarts.
The son of an accountant, Cunningham said he isn't afraid to talk about the "boring" subject of money and peppered his talk last week with jokes and gags and even a dance contest so as not to lose his audience of Grade 11 and 12 students.
"Broke people, where are you?" Cunningham said as he scanned the bleachers. "Who wants to win some money?"
He listed five basic groups of broke teenagers:
those who buy gas for their parents' cars in $2 increments;
those who take the bus ("singles clubs for broke people");
those who think Kraft Dinner is an essential food group;
those who borrow money from the piggy banks of younger siblings;
and those who think their pants are magic when they find money in the pockets.
Then he began delivering the serious message about how students can avoid money problems in the future. To make sure they were following along, he gave money to those students who answered simple questions or were interviewed in front of the audience.
"Know your flow, where does it come from, where does it go," Cunningham told Port Coquitlam students, pointing out that teenage spending accounts for $100 billion in consumer activity in North America yet young people earn only $5.6 billion from part-time and summer jobs, gifts and allowances.
He told them the typical North American wallet is stuffed with credit cards, bank cards and merchant credit cards with high interest rates, and urged them to wait before getting just a single credit card for emergencies.
"I am tired of talking to college students about their massive credit card debt. These credit card companies are taking billions out of your pockets," he said, as he exhorted them to "control what you owe."
Young people may not have a lot of cash at their disposable but they do have time in their favour and Cunningham urged the students it "invest some dough" in investment vehicles, such as tax free savings accounts (TFSA) as soon as possible.
He then sweetened the deal by offering $50 to the student who could recite his three points, promised to put their savings in a mutual fund or a TFSA, and was rated by the audience as the best dancer. One boy walked away with the bill at the end of the contest.
Cunningham also told students to go online to www.getsmarteraboutmoney.ca if they had any more questions.
Fox business education teacher Ken Kuhn said Cunningham's speaking fee was covered by sponsors (Investor Education Fund and the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada) and told The Tri-City News he brought the funnyman to the school to get kids thinking about money because they don't get enough schooling in financial literacy.
