Money champs learn life lessons

Four Minnesota high school seniors who won the first National Personal Finance Challenge last month weren't even sure they should enter the contest.

Little Falls Community High School doesn't have a personal finance course. They had homework to do and yearbooks to sign. And by the time their economics teacher, Tom Stockard, mentioned the contest, they had mere weeks to prepare for the qualifying rounds. But Oliver Carrillo, Kayla Plante, Ben Surma and Olivia Warner were already used to competing together in economics contests and decided that since the subjects overlapped, they'd give it a shot.

Besides, what better area to study before heading off to college than money?

And study they did. The group spent long hours after school, noses buried in college-level personal finance textbooks and googling topics such as investing and annuities. They had to answer these kinds of questions:

•A 529 savings plan is designed to fund what specific expense? (college education)

•Name one of the sources of what is termed "easy-access credit." (pawnshop, payday loans, rent-to-own, title loans)

•What is the name for a short-term unsecured promissory note issued by a company, typically for a maturity of less than 270 days? (commercial paper)

The Missouri Council on Economic Education started the contest, with funding from the Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation, to provide high school students taking a personal finance course in the state an incentive to pay attention. "By making this a really high stakes competition with some pretty great prizes, students study very hard and learn quite a bit about money management and credit and investing," said Mike English, CEO of the Missouri Council.

The winners, who each nabbed a $1,000 savings bond, competed against students from a dozen states, first in rounds of written tests, then in a quiz-bowl-like competition. Some competitors came from states that require teens to take a personal finance class in school. In Minnesota, it's not mandatory. High schools in the state aren't even required to offer the course as an elective, according to the Council for Economic Education.

Stockard, who also led a team of students to victory in last year's National Economics Challenge, said tight budgets make it tougher to find money to teach kids about money. But they're definitely interested in the topic. "Kids are driven by nature to learn how to make their money grow," he said.

Without study, teens tend to be "unaware of all the costs that are involved in living a basic, simple life," he said.

Add that ignorance to credit cards and student loans and we've got a recipe for trouble.

Surma, 17, said the contest taught him "how the various markets work and what all the lingo is about." Last year, he followed in his siblings' footsteps and opened up a Roth IRA. "After studying personal finance, I fully realize what the advantages are. I didn't really know at the time when I set it up what I was really getting into, but now I do."

For Olivia Warner, 18, the contest really drove home the idea that the earlier you can start saving, the better, because of the magic of compound interest. And while she reluctantly signed on to compete, in hindsight, "it's a lot of good knowledge to have so I can make good choices with my own finances," she said. "I do wish that schools in Minnesota would have personal finance as a requirement because I think it's really important. I don't think many people who graduate have much of an idea, and it's knowledge they need to have when they graduate. Otherwise, they're just kind of lost."

For the full quiz, check out my blog: www.startribune.com/kablog.