‘Primed and Prepped’ for money management

In November, the Bayview YMCA in San Francisco invited Consumer Action’s Audrey Perrott back to the Primed and Prepped program’s current eight-week session on food service preparation and hospitality management. Kelly Armstrong, co-founder and project manager of Primed and Prepped, asked Perrott to present the MoneyWi$e “Teens and Money” module to the students enrolled in the program.

The Primed and Prepped program provides food service training to young men from underserved communities. Armstrong, a financial educator and long-term partner with Consumer Action, sought Perrott’s participation because an earlier MoneyWi$e training for previous program graduates proved to be beneficial. Consumer Action’s MoneyWi$e modules are created in partnership with Capital One Bank and contain a wealth of information on personal finance topics designed to empower consumers to manage their money, save and financially prosper.

Perrott has conducted financial literacy trainings for youth and adults at the Bayview YMCA before and said she welcomed the opportunity to return to the facility.

“I appreciate the opportunity to share information with these young men and empower them to make informed decisions. The activities in the module equip them to handle real-life scenarios,” explained Perrott.

The young men welcomed Perrott by preparing her a meal from their industrial kitchen. They were eager to learn and share information about their own banking and money management skills. One young man shared with his peers that he uses online banking as a tool to manage his account.

During the hour-and-a-half workshop, Perrott not only covered the substantive material from the module, but also gave the students a chance to put their knowledge into practice in a number of MoneyWi$e activities, including Wants vs. Needs, Jamal’s First Paycheck, Check Writing, Check Register, and Monica and Sarah. (All modules and activities can be found on the MoneyWi$e website.)

Armstrong requires the young men in her class to write in journals, where they chronicle what they have learned. Perrott provided the students with a take-home assignment to conduct a weekly spending evaluation and return to class with a journal entry on how they modified their spending or re-evaluated making a purchase based on what they learned in the classroom.

“Thank you for taking time out of your life to give a very insightful and meaningful financial literacy workshop to the students of Primed and Prepped,” said Armstrong.