the experts i'm representative and o'brian back again this month with another guest to share with you on the topic of money and financial literacy my guest today is our state treasurer of beth pearce welcome thank you glad to have you rich ar you treasurer pearce was appointed to the vermont state treasurer office in january of two thousand and eleven and has about thirty five years of experience and government both at the state and local levels  she has served as a vermont deputy state treasurer for about seven years and in that role she had a whole range of jobs and we're going to do a little bit of information about the state treasurer's office as a prelude to our program on how to raise money smart child because it was kind of gives a context for the work i was interested to bring the treasurer appears here on to the program so that we could demonstrate the work at the state level and the treasurer's office and how it sort of cascades all the way down to the work in our home with our own home budgets and finances so as the deputy treasure beth pearce was responsible for a full range of operations including the retirement administration there are three statewide retirement systems in vermont it's a big system a lot to administer the state employees the state teachers and she was also responsible for the unclaimed property program accounting budget debt and capital financing cash management the investment of short term funds for the the funds that are in the state's custody that need to be invested on the short term and risk management so there is a lot when i got to montpelier and on the appropriations committee i was really interested to learn about the level of complexity that happens at the state treasure office and one other note by way of introduction is that treasure pierce was noted in the bond buyer national publication as a quote trailblazing woman in public finance so really happy to have you here thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to join us and we wanted to talk a little bit about the treasurer's office and what you do there and then sort of segue into raising smart children and regards to money certainly  me tell you a little bit about the treasurer's office the treasurer serves as the state's banker and investment officer and you're correct we also managed retirement systems for forty five thousand nine hundred active and retired members of the state the teachers in the m so there's a great deal going on my bottom line is the state's bond rating your credit rating at home you have a credit rating and that tells people a little bit about yourself and your credit worthiness and you ability to to buy a home oh get a  best credit rating in new england best a credit rating in new england and we've managed to keep that despite irene and despite the great recession we've done that and we're going to talk a little bit about how because the practices we do there have a lot to do the types of practices you want to do in managing your own home and developing your own financial literacy i also want to tell you some good news as i mentioned standard and poor's rated us double a plus it's the second highest rating and it that's with a stable outlook  today we were advised that we've been moved from stable to positive so we're on the way toward a triple a we have that opportunity and it's a continue the good fiscal management good work with the legislature i thank you very much and and good work with the governor  manager of a partnership for prudent fiscal management and conservative management that will bring the state forward in economic prosperity but as i talked about bond ratings as i said it's very much like a credit rating and it goes with you to your entire life and one of the things we want to help children and adults work through is how they can be good financial citizens because that's important to our economy if you have goods and services and if you have income in retirement you know able to buy goods and services that creates jobs so we want folks to be able to have a very productive life and move toward economic independence in their in their retirement years so that they can continue to be have a prosperous economy for themselves and create jobs and help in terms of the vermont economy so financial literacy is not just good for the individual it's really good for the market as well you know i i wondered if this whole program about how to raise money smart child caught my eye when i was looking and i as i mentioned to you earlier rather than saying you know here's the treasurer's office and here's what they do i have decided on this program to kind of hone in on something specifically that is a it's results oriented website and aid to help parents the idea behind it is that again i deal with forty five thousand nine hundred people that are going to eventually retire to the various state systems and we have programs from age kindergarten all the way through the golden years but the closer you get to retirement it's harder to to to save for retirement if you start very late in life we want to develop those good practices early so we want to work with children but when working with children you need to involve parents and the money smart child initiative really tries to develop that dialogue between parent and child what we found is national research shows us that almost half of parents if they raided their financial literacy skills would rate themselves as c well lower that's not good and they turn around and children rely on their parents and they learn from their parents so we want to raise the bar and help with that dialogue so this program is to try to help parents develop the confidence and skill sets to talk to their children about money and thereby helping themselves as well so financial literacy like what it really is financial literacy that's a great question that's a great question there's i'm going to paraphrase a little but the the president's council on financial literacy describes it as a life time of financial wellbeing i think that's the goal we all want financial well being  our golden years and a little closer to those years and some and essentially it's about the the things that we need to do the practices we need to do to get there it's about managing a home budget managing credit developing a practice for savings and the children developing those at an early age so that by the time you get into your adult life it added to those later years you develop those skills to be good citizens for them out and how early it is start well we really want to start very early we've got some progress we've got a program called reading in his investment and that's a new program as well that starts in kindergarten through the sixth grade and it emphasizes reading and it also emphasizes in developing good financial management now if you're in kindergarten you're probably not thinking about your four one k but the book might be about the bunny that say's versus the bunny that doesn't and interested develop good skills so that you can use those later in life so and that program you're doing in  public school system the public school systems in the libraries are with this is the worst worst are embarking on our thirty year the first year we had thirteen hundred children finished the entire program about seventy six hundred or participated in one way or another which is a reading program and a reading log and some exercises that they did the second year we went from thirteen hundred to twenty two hundred children completing the program and both years we put in the names of all the folks that completed the log into it into a dr hundred thirty schools are participating that's very exciting and as a point of interest for people there is actually a program that will be held in richmond at the richmond elementary absolutely on september twenty seventh twenty seventh i believe at five fifteen if i engaged parents to participate in schools over fifty schools participated in this that goes out to parents so they can learn about financial management and how to talk to their children about it the parents will talk to their kids about a lot of subjects finance is generally not one of them and we want to signed up and we hope to have a full house grades so i want to go to this idea of how where do you start what's the curriculum like like for kindergarten do you give a kindergarten dot vermont dot gov and we've good tremendous resources allowance is a very interesting subject usually folks to talk about age five is about the time you want to start getting children into the habit of understand you wouldn't allowances and saving for that for that big toy perhaps in putting a little learning to pay yourself first that's what we talk about in terms of investments you always get your paycheck you pay yourself first you put that aside if you want to have children start to learn  concept how you do an allowance of various theories about that whether it should be related to chores whether it's those type of things one thing that experts say is don't related to punishment don't but most folks think that a way to do it would be to have a base allowance and then incentives for other other tasks but what would you want to do is help a child learn what that an allowance has consequences if you spend it all you don't have it tomorrow and if you save for that big that do have that toy car you want that you can get that in attain a goal and again puts on the net savings account those are the types of things that we want to impress on parents to start at an early age i remember my mother  my sister i'm looking at these dolls in the store when that we were up and saying albums and we were so wide eyed about the dolls and she said well if you save your money and it took us months but when we bought those drawings it was very meaningful to the very wise mother it was really a good lesson if your mother your mother your mother is very wise so how about activities that families do or the program actually includes those kinds of things like how to work with your child about savings or budget and heard those  kinds gains out of this one one i'll let you read the book about jelly beans and you know if you eat all the jelly beans you don't have any the next day and in some methods that you could take that allowance and build a calendar with a child about how you could say this would you go wit dog how much of the dog cost put that on the can you know and if you look at your allowance and you spend x amount of your allowance and you say to you allowance the amount of time it would take to reach getting that done and then you can put that on a fall much better much better thank you eat healthy and another i've enjoyed reading the parents guide very much as preparation for this program and one of the things that interested me also was teaching children about investing like i hadn't you know with my children who are now grown ups and you know we we we didn't do a very good job with that when they were younger once i kind of thought well when they turned eighteen then they'll learn about you know the stock market or bonds or mutual magically really happens and i think that that would be i was i didn't think of it for the younger child and that was of interest to me about why would you starts so early teaching kids that content again part of it is teaching them to say first and as i said you know going forward and putting your savings for sale putting their first five cents or ten cents or whatever you're putting him into that there that bank aside for your first you first pay yourself first but invest investments assault in the takes a long time too to learn and you can start with little things the reading investment program actually has a couple of books in there one's called the stock market price and the other one is  isabel's car wash and i invite folks to take a look online they can get a synopsis of those and understand them check it in your library check it at your school hopefully the schools in the area have those books and a participating in our reading is an investment program so one hundred thirty schools are participating and it's an opportunity to try that it's also a game out there called the stock market game and that's sad developed nationally and it's a good game about learning how to to mitt you get an imaginary portfolio in the markets managed by a group called the vermont council an economic education that's something that could teach kids about the real world of finance was i would suggest something a little more basic in the beginning learning to say going with your mother or your father to the bank and certain up a savings account if you're going to the bank i suggest a couple of other learning experiences one might be that you put the money in the big in a deposit first before you take it out of the a t m you know i mean of my granddaughter one saying if you need money i know that there's a bank there you just can just should just go get it wasn't my daughter's bank she didn't understand the concept of that a t m was a money making machine that you had to put it in and save it first so those are learning moments of parents can have with children and i think that's very important one of my other questions was how are the results of the statewide program going so far realize it's just so you're all that you've been doing this but in terms of how are you measuring how successful a program always had great feedback number one getting a living thousand packages out to folks this is helping we've had several seminars and we do evaluate the results of those seven and what we're hearing is great feedback that parents also learning from each other they talk about their own experiences your doll experience would be a perfect thing to bring up at one of those seminars you go to richmond talk about that i think that's a great example of how your mom and dad helped you to learn good financial management at an early age so there's a practical things that folks learn from each other and from the materials that we provide we've got it great response across the state with these seminars and we expect the same in the richmond us women as well so as the program also quite there are co sponsors yes there's other for example the program in richmond on the twenty seventh has is open to everyone there's free childcare and there's a free dinner which is under written by some people's united bank sponsors this particular program and we're very pleased for their support and the jump start coalition which is a national coalition of financial literacy groups that work with youth and the states very fortunate to have that that that nexus to work the financial literacy office is one individual so we can't do it all and what we look for is collaboration and working together with groups and we did raise money as i said people united is sponsoring this program this is not your tax dollars this is not cost the taxpayers one dime to do these programs but it's great as i said it's good public policy for people to become active citizens with good financial management skills just as that the state has that high bond rating we want our our our citizens to have good credit so they can go out and buy homes buy cars and do the things that they need as adults and  important to remind you as you were talking i was wondering about the whole area of the development of further programs like when you get feedback from communities for example have earned richmond and i are my antennas up about this now that i e mailed our public library the librarian here today to the say oh you know do you know about this program and would you like to consider doing it  how do communities around the state know about it sure what we do have a curio as i said on our website and they can take a look at that and we do introduce the reading and investment program we send out notices the various schools if they're interested in the libraries now the libraries the new edition the first year we did a program we had a hundred and ninety schools participate and again this is terms of of outcomes last year it was over one hundred twenty and this year the hundred thirty plus plus thirty librar so this is really exciting if you're interested in it you can call office and the full of the number so i get it right you can call our office at eight to eight two three zero one you can call i'm going to give you lisa helm is our director of financial literacy in her direct number of eight to eight three seven zero six and toll free in vermont eight hundred six four two three one nine one vermont only toll free give office a call we'll be happy to get you into the program and talk about other options that we have as i said we have programs we did one program for financial readiness for the families of troops going overseas and we're very pleased to have been able to participate in that we have one called the golden years again help folks are they getting close to people and ask them if they had questions in the event that we didn't have a call in and then one of the questions that i got from a friend of mine who has actually a five year old you know that she said i really feel very inadequate about my own financial literacy like i don't have those skills it's sort of like i don't know spanish and i want my child to be a fan so how do we help parents get over that hurdle of you know i'm not really comfortable myself i don't even know where to start but i think that one of the things that the the book again going back to this does is it helps you learn so that you can help others it's sort of like training the teacher and it's a really good hands on approach we have other resource materials as i said we have one on our kids and money and how to raise a money smart child we have materials on credit cards for adults in it and how to use it so i would recommend studying with this and if you work through this it will help you think about your financial situation and things that you can do so that you liked be able to apply that to your own life and then turn around and apply it to you and your children's life one of the things that this encourages is to talk to your children about family budgeting so if you don't have a family budget one way to start is to develop your family budget in the end share that with your children share that not not all the specifics but sure how you do a family budget would have some of the parameters and take a look at what you can and can't do as a family and how woman managing for the future your child might say well how are you going to pay for my college education and that them that's a that's a good question and something that you can talk about about what you're going to be doing and what their child's obligations are in the process to help prepare for college so another question that i had was from a single parent who was concerned  herself really didn't have enough money to give an allowance she wanted to be teaching the schools but she said you know i don't even you know words that we're just trying to scrape by impair our own bills and so to pay our my child an allowance would seems like a really big hardship this are another way to look at it or is there you know as an allowance to so important command teach these skills without that i think the allowance is a good skill and if you're not able to do that i think the next thing you need to do is start with that pay yourself first and whatever you do in terms of your own finances you start to put a little aside and just build on that and i know that's easier said than done but there are materials that we have and are and are programs that would help you do that and just try to build those skills there are also teachable moments you know if you go to the to the bank or if you go to the store you pay for goods and services have your five year old you see that you pay for it and then help you have the five year old count the change with you understand the exchange of money and so there are teachable moments that you can do as you prepare to do your own life to live to get to that point and we really are looking again for that that that lifetime of financial well being for everyone adults and children i do want to thank you so much for coming to richmond taking time out of your busy schedule i will acknowledge that it's the campaign season and i know that you have a really busy schedule and are working hard on  election and so i really appreciate that you were able to come and it's my pleasure this isn't a time without subject it really is for vermont future as i said we go hand in hand the individual financial literacy goes hand in hand with the good prudent fiscal management at the state and we manage one of the things the my mantra is about the state is live within your means that's important and that's something that we need to help children understand as they grow into into adults that's something that the state needs to continue to do our prudent fiscal management is reflected in our bond rating the prudent fiscal management that a child does on adult does as they as they grow will be borne out in their credit rating  and their financial their financial well being and that's something we hope to see for all of our citizens because thank you so much i also just want to again invite you to your watching or if you know of anyone who would be interested in the program in richmond it's on it's at five forty five pm it includes free childcare and dinner and the program itself is how to raise money smart child tips for parents i hope to see you there thanks again and please contact me if you have any questions i'm always available to take your questions or follow up with treasurer pierce if you have follow questions at some future date thanks so much goodnight