Episode Summary
Rob Phelan, CFEI, is a full-time high school personal finance teacher living in Frederick, Maryland, with his wife and son. He is the founder of The Simple StartUp, where he guides 10- to 18-year-old entrepreneurs through starting their first businesses, and he most recently published a children’s book, “M is for Money,” that introduces 3- to 8-year-olds to age-appropriate money words and normalizes conversations about money.
Episode Notes:
• I got into personal finance about six years ago. My school asked me to teach this class, it was like a Math personal since hybrid, my wife at the time we were dating, we just moved in together, she was the one who was the money person in our house, and through our conversations, it became clear that I needed to learn more about money as well to become more co-partner in our decision-making, and like we talk about with couples all the time, we wanna make sure that everyone is a knowledgeable participant in the finances of the house (10:56)
• It’s not something that you have to be born into a wealthy family to be able to do all these things so I became very passionate about teaching others. I started with my own classroom, and then the ChooseFI Foundation, developed a pre-K through 12 Personal Finance curriculum that’s free to use, and then the next step was my son was born. (12:13)
• I think there’s so much learned from kids’ books, particularly when you go back a sec with an adult or a teenage mind and look at them like some examples that come to mind, or like the goose that laid the golden egg, talking about the fishermen and the businessman, Jack In The being stock. Those are ones that if you approach that with an adult line, now you’re like, What are the morals in here and how does it apply to finances, and there are some really cool conversations that can actually come from those (16:14)
• I first heard about it from a friend who took her probably two-year-old son at the time to a local bank, they opened a checking account for him, a junior saber checking account, whatever it was. And they got a little goody bag from the bank for the custodial account holder, and I was like, Oh, that’s really cool. So I started approaching my local banks and credit unions, and three of them have signed up already to pick up copies of the book and give it out to the kids as they sign up for accounts (18:37)
CONNECT WITH ROB PHELAN
•Email: misformoneybook@gmail.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robephelan
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/FIeducator
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/misformoneybook/
• Choose FI curriculum: https://www.choosefifoundation.org/prek12
•Teachers Pay Teachers: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Fi-Educator
•M is for Money on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/M-Money-Rob-Phelan/dp/1737149028
•The Simple Startup: https://thesimplestartup.com/
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WHEN DOES IT AIR…
APRIL 20th, 2022