School’s out, cash is in

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/06/2020 (2131 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the stock market was crashing in March, Kim Dang and John Mark Briones saw opportunity.

The problem was the two 18-year-old university students had no idea how to take advantage of this chance to buy low (and hopefully sell high years from now).

“I wanted to invest in stocks, but I didn’t know how to do it,” says Briones, who recently completed his first year of engineering at the University of Manitoba.

Like his friend, Dang, he had been saving. Yet he found himself at a loss about how to even trade stocks, let alone select the right undervalued companies ripe for a rebound in their share price.

Dang felt similarly: “I was doing some research around what I can do to cash in on the market, and I found an ad for a financial literacy class.”

Both enrolled in a free, online seminar offered by the Enriched Academy. And they weren’t alone. A leading provider of financial literacy in Canada, the organization began offering a free program for teens and young adults as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, given so many were no longer in the classroom.

First offered until the end of April, the course was so popular — with more than 2,000 individuals signing up — Enriched extended the offering to the end of June. Yet demand has continued, so the free course is now available through the summer.

“We’re trying to reset people’s perceptions of what wealth is,” says Kevin Cochran, president and co-founder of Enriched Academy, who spent decades honing personal finance material to make it accessible, compelling and meaningful for youth.

“This whole thing started by accident about 20 years ago after finishing high school,” says Cochran, who didn’t attend university after graduating, opting instead to work at a shopping mall in a series of dead-end jobs.

“Within two years of finishing high school, I had more than $20,000 of credit card debt.”

Tempted by credit card offers of seemingly large sums of money he didn’t truly have, the younger Kevin spent freely with no plan to pay off the high-interest debt.

Learning via the school of hard knocks, he crawled out of debt and started touring high schools as a motivational speaker.

To use the words of his audience, it was an epic fail. “Kids were falling asleep,” he adds.

But Cochran — much like a standup comedian — kept working on his shtick, making it more entertaining and accessible. At the same time he became a successful entrepreneur, co-founding Dominion Lending Centres (one of Canada’s leading mortgage brokers) which he sold with his partners for $120 million.

Then came a popular DVD version of the money talk he had practised and polished, which sold out quickly. Soon, Enriched Academy found its way to the TV show Dragons’ Den, winning over the financial support of two dragons, Jim Treliving among them. That helped Enriched Academy built its online service that now serves schools, police associations, the Canadian Football League Players’ Association and countless other organizations.

Among its clients is CDI College in Winnipeg. The college’s career services manager Craig Johnson says Enriched Academy’s course material is just what students at the vocational post-secondary school need as they embark on careers.

Financial literacy “is a topic that has been lacking in many K-12 educational curriculums across Canada,” says Johnson, also a school board trustee for the St. James-Assiniboia School Division.

What’s more, Enriched Academy’s programming provides “common sense advice to students on managing their resources while attending college.”

But it also gives them “a foundation for personal financial responsibility and planning,” he says.

Indeed Canadian youth — and for that matter most adults — might find this money know-how handy.

Kevin McCarthy, Enriched Academy’s head of corporate and institutional engagement, says the secret of its success lies in its tone and style, rather than the just subject matter itself.

“I have seen pretty much every style of financial literacy,” says McCarthy, former chief of staff for the late Jim Flaherty, the former federal financial minister, who was a big booster of financial literacy.

“To be honest, much of it was pretty boring.”

Enriched Academy’s content isn’t, and that’s one reason he joined the company.

“We also don’t sell any (financial) products. It’s just pure education,” he says, adding many financial literacy initiatives come from the financial industry itself.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, but (these companies’) main motivation is to sell product (like credit cards, bank accounts, mutual funds and GICs).”

He notes Enriched Academy’s free web course covers a handful of basic topics that are parts of its much more in-depth, pay-for-content online offering, as well as its live event presentations.

The subjects include money myths, or the psychological misperceptions we often hold about finances. Another examines credit cards, along with dos and don’ts, such as the negative impact of only making minimum payments. A third focuses on student loans while another looks into how to create a budget. The last section deals with career building, or, more pointedly, goal-setting and planning.

(Of course, paid content goes much deeper and includes online interviews with folks like Stephen Harper.)

High school teacher and financial blogger at Milliondollarjourney.com, Kyle Prevost, says a lot of financial literacy is geared for younger folks, but few do it as well as Enriched Academy.

“There are lots of places where people can learn about personal finance,” says Prevost, a Manitoba teacher now on his way to Qatar to teach personal finance.

“To be honest, not much goes step-by-step like Enriched.”

Indeed, the programming resonated with Dang and Briones, who both eventually paid about $600 apiece for the full online course so they could learn more about how to invest in the stock market, create a budget to save for the future and plan for retirement.

“They like to emphasize education as… the power to change our outcomes,” Dang says. “That got me hooked.”

Briones agrees.

“Learning math, science, social studies… those are all good things to learn,” he says. “But money is something we all use.”

Enriched Academy’s free online course for students runs until Aug. 31. Enrol at enrichedacademy.com.