About

Our Mission

Moneythink aims to foster smart money management among high school students, promoting decisions and habits that will lead to a lifetime of financial independence. Through a flexible curriculum, discussion based classes, and connecting students with bright and motivated college age mentors, we give students encouragement and support to set ambitious goals, and the tools they need to reach them.

How we’re doing it

• Motivated college students are using their talents and our infrastructure and networks to organize financial literacy classes throughout the country.
• Our comprehensive ten week curriculum focuses on six major topics:
  1. Goal Setting
  2. Saving and Budgeting
  3. Debt and Credit
  4. Economic Fundamentals
  5. Investing and Entrepreneurship
  6. Current Events
• Check out a general overview of our curriculum here.
• Seminar style-classes encourage students to get involved and think pro-actively
• Our unique mentor training program takes bright college students and puts them in the classroom, fostering cultural exchange across socio-economic boundaries and giving students the opportunity to forge personal relationships.
• Off campus events, like the annual investment pitch competition, offer students the opportunity to meet with motivated peers and executives in local financial industry
• Specialized workshops for motivated program graduates, launching this spring, focus on entrepreneurialism and investing. These give students a more hands on approach to the business world, and allows them to use our network within universities and local business communities to to make connections that will help them succeed.

How do Moneythink classes work?

Mentors enter each classroom once a week, tailoring our flexible curriculum to fit the dynamic of their class. Each lesson is followed up with an activity or worksheet, which is reviewed by the mentor at the following session. Furthermore, students set goals during the first few sessions, and their progress is tracked over the duration of the course, and discussion are held on how the students can their new knowledge to advance them.

Where we’re going

Moneythink is expanding both locally and nationally. At the University of Chicago, where the organization was founded, we are operating in six schools across the southside, and are moving aggressively to be operating in ten by fall of 2010. Throughout the country, we there are fledging chapters at twelve other universities, and Moneythink mentors teaching in public schools at Washington University at St Louis Gonzaga and the University of Florida.

As the organization matures and our reputation grows, we hope to reach 100 high schools across the country by 2014, exporting an increasingly developed, flexible, and scalable curriculum to make an impact on all of our students.

Check our blog for regular updates on our progress.