Building Wealth

1) Listeners learned that creating financial resources isn’t just about earning a paycheck. Instead, you must make smart decisions about what to do with your money every day. What types of things did the role models suggest doing with money? How will these things help you build wealth?

2) One role model told us that building wealth is about “using math to create the life you want.” Do you have to be good at math to build wealth? Can anyone make the choice to create and maintain their financial resources? Why or why not?

3) Listeners learned about many of the steps that they can take to build and maintain wealth. What do you think is the hardest part about building wealth? What is the easiest? Explain your answers.

4) A role model said that “having financial stability will allow you to take care of your family… to take care of yourself.” What does financial stability mean to you? How can being financially stable allow you to better take care of yourself and your family?

5) Delayed gratification can be a powerful tool to use in building wealth. Have you ever practiced delayed gratification? Was it easy or hard? What types of things could you practice delayed gratification on in the future?

Building wealth is all about how to create and maintain the ability to grow your financial resources.

Having that financial stability will help you to take care of your family, will help you to take care of yourself, and delaying that gratification. And what I mean by instant gratification meaning I have to have it now. You can have it. Maybe not right now, but if you work hard enough for it, you can have it in the future, and it goes back to always having that vision. What is it that you want? If you can start to think about, if I only put $5 away each week, the ability to have that compounded interest rates and very simple cash accounts at your local bank, the ability to start to see that grow over time and as you educate, you can actually make more types of investments, maybe when you’re outside of college. And this idea about saving to keep yourself out of debt is a really important way in which you can have the most value for your money.

You can calculate, if I put in $200 every year for the next 15 years at a 6% compound rate, how much will I have 15 years from now? It’s a practical way of looking at how you can use math to create the life that you want.

So the more you can build wealth now, the more you can invest now, the more return you’ll see, and the more financially independent you’ll be.

It’s really never too early to become a disciplined worker. And you need to look at the earnings from that job again, not to simply support yourself and do retail therapy or spend money. That’s unnecessary, but to really think about how you can use those earnings to build your financial future.

Independent Learning Guide: This all-purpose guide can also be used by educators, parents, and mentors to jumpstart a valuable discussion about building wealth and maintaining financial resources.

Classroom Lesson Plan: This step-by-step lesson plan is available to guide a more in-depth “before, during, and after” learning experience when viewing the video with students. This lesson plan is also suitable for use in after-school programs and other educational settings.

Fun Page Activity: What is the difference between a want and a need? How can delaying gratification help you build wealth? Test your knowledge with this activity. You might be surprised by how quickly you can begin building your financial resources!