'Money Camp': The Camp That Teaches Kids To Be Millionaires
"The Camp That Makes Future Millionaires," BBC, Aug. 30, 2019. Why are kids going to ‘money camp’? Excerpts:
In a rented room in a church in an upmarket Toronto suburb, Hasina Lookman is running through various stock market indices at a rapid clip. “Tell me about volume,” she asks, then follows up with an explanation of market capitalisation. Her listeners, clearly engaged, appear eager to weigh-in on what might cause a stock’s value to fluctuate.
But this isn’t night school, or a loal college class. Lookman is a project manager who founded and teaches at Camp Millionaire, and her dozen or so students are all children between the ages of 10 and 14. When she pulls up a financial summary for the Disney company showing, among other things, a serious dip in value in the recent past, one of the kids stage-whispers: “I bet that was when Aladdin came out.”
While from diverse ethnic backgrounds, Lookman says that most kids are from middle and upper middle class families. (The weeklong camp costs C$275 (about £168), but Lookman says she offers bursaries to children from lower income families.) And they’re mostly not there because they want to be rich, she adds. “You tend to have kids from families where both parents work so they already understand that you need to work hard to have a good life,” she says.. When many of us look back on summer holidays during childhood, we might think of hours spent outside or at summer camps kicking balls, swimming or doing theatre. But in recent years a growing number of summer camps, as well as books and magazines, are teaching children how to make and save money – and how to get rich.
Finance camps just like Camp Millionaire are popping up across North America. In Denver, there’s Junior Money Matters, which teaches international trade theory to pre-teens. In Austin, Moolah U offers camps where children create a business, including making a product and selling it for real money. While Kids Biz Academy in Hong Kong runs a holiday camp where kids ages 8-14 learn the nuts and bolts of running a business, from product design venture capitalism. And Youngpreneurs, based in Kolkata, India, pairs teenagers with real-life entrepreneurial mentors.
Back in Canada, Camp Millionaire teaches budgeting, saving and making investment decisions, as well as more complex financial concepts like how a trade war with China might affect a Canadian investor’s bottom line...It’s not just summer camps; money advice for young children and teens is increasingly becoming a cottage industry. Budding young speculators can try out a new crypto-currency piggy bank from start-up Pigzbe. “Teen Boss” magazine has headlines like “How to build your brand by being you.”
Frazier points out that kids are learning about money whether they know it or not...Finance camps are one way to make those conversations intentional and to avoid colouring advice or education with personal baggage. “You just want them to understand money as a tool,” says Frazier. “It’s not good or bad, it’s neutral. They need to learn the idea that wants come after the needs, why money is important and how we earn money. Then build on that.”...
More, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190827-the-camp-that-makes-future-millionaires
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