Week 8: October 30, 2024

What we learned:

1. Earning Money

Key learnings: 

• Everyone has different personal financial goals - therefore, we all need to create different financial plans!
• Minimum wage is the lowest amount you can legally pay someone to work for you
• Resumes are super important when it comes to getting a job! You should always include contact information, your past work/volunteering experience, your skills, your interests, your education, and your achievements/awards! 
• References are also super important when finding a job - this is how your future employers can verify that you have had prior work experience, and they can ask your reference their experience in working with you

What we need to prepare:

Everyone needs to create a list of the 3 things they want to buy most in the future, and write down how much each thing costs - make sure you look online to figure out the price, don't just make it up! If it's something like a house which may have different prices depending on size, location, etc., look online for a house you really like, and write down its price!

Week 7: October 25, 2024

What we learned: 

1. Dangers of Debt
2. Mortgages
3. Acceptable vs. Unacceptable Debt 
4. Secured vs. Unsecured Debt

Key learnings: 

• There are two types of debt - acceptable vs. unacceptable debt - acceptable debt is when you spend money on an investment for yourself, like a mortgage (loan for a house) and educational loans. Unacceptable debt is when you are in debt over things like credit card bills, which were avoidable!
• When you lend something to someone, you become a creditor. The person borrowing money is a lender.
• Secured debt is when the creditor takes something as collateral - for example, when you take out a mortgage, the bank may say if you don't pay us bank, we will take your house and sell it (foreclosure). Unsecured debt is when there is no collateral.
• Being in debt and missing payments can affect your credit score - how much the bank trusts you based on whether you are paying your loan back or not!

What we need to prepare:

Everyone needs to write a short story based on something that causes you to lose trust in someone/something (e.g. you forget your homework over and over again and your teacher loses trust in you), and represent that on a credit score scale! Make sure you draw the credit score scale as an example of how your trust levels either go up or down based on what happens in the story!

Week 7: October 18, 2024

What we learned: 

1. Basics on Loans
2. Credit Card Loans

Key learnings: 

• In a loan agreement, there are four different things we look at - what is being loaned, aka how much money is being loaned, how much the monthly payments are, what the interest rate is, and what is the loan term, aka how long the loan is being paid back for
• Paying your credit card bills in time ensures you maintain a good credit score! Your credit score tells the bank how trustworthy you are in terms of paying them their money back.
• A high credit score will make the bank more likely to lend you money, as they know they can trust you to pay back the money you borrow.

Week 6: October 11, 2024

What we learned: 

1. Banking

Key learnings: 

• There are two types of bank accounts you can have - checking and savings - checking accounts are for more immediate/day to day spending, and savings accounts are ideal for saving up to achieve long term goals - they also accumulate interest!
• Interest is money that is added on to a payment - when you open a bank account, the bank will give you a certain amount of interest for choosing to bank with them, meaning you get some extra money! However, when you are returning a loan to the bank, you will have to pay the loan back with some added interest!
• The value of interest the bank gives you when you open an account with them is always less than the interest you will pay back when returning your loan - this is how banks make their money!
• Credit cards use money from the bank, whereas debit cards are your own money - but you always have to pay your credit card bills on time for the amount of money you used on it, or you risk affecting your credit score.

What we need to prepare:

Everyone should design the front of their own made up credit card at home! No need to do the back. If you need a reminder of the different parts of a credit card, refer to the image below! Feel free to add drawings, colour and designs to the background of the card. Please remember NOT to include any real information on your credit card.

Week 5: October 4, 2024

What we learned: 

1. Budgeting

Key learnings: 

• Split your money into 3 categories - spend, save, and invest! You should allocate 50% of your money to investing, 30% to saving, and 20% to spending in your day to day life
• Budgeting works best when you set goals for yourself to achieve! Make sure to include a time frame for your goals
• You should always calculate your net income (money you have after taxes) and analyse your past spendings before you create your budget!

What we need to prepare:

Everyone should use a $500 budget and allocate 50% to investing, 30% to saving and 20% to spending - make sure to include what you would invest in, save for, and spend on, and how much money those things cost!

Week 4: September 27, 2024

What we learned: 

1. Finishing the Golden Rules of Savings
2. Intro to Budgeting

Key learnings: 

• Golden Rule #4 - Stop wasting - we waste about $1,300 per person in food annually in Canada!
• Golden Rule #5 - Set a goal - having a realistic goal and following it will allow you to stay on track to responsibly spend, save and invest!
• Creating a budget will allow you to section some money off into spending, saving and investing categories.
• Short term goals = less than one year, long term goals = more than 5 years

What we need to prepare:

Everyone should bring a list of 3 short term goals they want to save for and 3 long term goals they would like to save for to our next class. Please remember to put your name on your paper!

Week 3: NO CLASS

Week 2: September 13, 2024

Hi all,

This week, we recapped our short homework task, which was to make a list of 3 wants and 3 needs. 

We began to look at the 5 Golden Rules of Savings. Today, we went through the first three, which are:

- Wait to buy what you want

- Choose wisely before spending and ask yourself: Do I need it? Will I enjoy it? Will I use it? Can I afford to pay for it twice?

- Start saving as early as possible - fun fact: if you start saving around age 10, this will increase your lifetime income by about 30%!

Next week, we will cover the last two golden rules, which are: 

- Stop wasting

- Set a goal

We will also be doing short quizzes on each rule as a class.

NO CLASS NEXT WEEK - SEPTEMBER 20

Week 1: September 6, 2024

Please scroll down ⬇️ for more information on the program.  Every week we will update this blog and the most recent update will be on the top. 

What we learned: 

1. How to keep a Balanced Life 
2. What is a Need
3. What is a Want

What they need to do:

• Come this week with a list of things you Need and another list of things you Want (It doesn’t need to be written, even if they just remember it that’s fine)

For parents:  For parents who are also interested in learning about Investing or have other children who are interested in learning about personal finance, we offer online self-learning courses in several languages.   Please click the language you are interested in to see the program.  We have numerous parents who choose to level up their money knowledge while their kids are learning. 

Learn Investing in: English  French   Spanish  Arabic  Mandarin

Learn Personal Finance: English French Mandarin Spanish

Introduction to the program

Welcome to Camp Millionaire - an internationally recognized program that teaches early financial literacy to kids. 

Our company was founded by a Giles Alumni!

It's pretty exciting to be back at Giles! The company was founded by a student who was only  in Grade 4 at Giles.  From our humble beginnings on a desk in Giles where the incredible teachers helped her, the idea grew into a company that has offered financial literacy education to more than 10,000 kids! We are not shy when telling the world what an incredible and empowering education is offered at Giles. Read more about our incredible co-founder here. 

For parents:  For parents who are also interested in learning about Investing, we offer online courses in several languages.   Please click the language you are interested in to see the program.  We have numerous parents who choose to level up their investing knowledge while their kids are learning. 

Learn Investing in: English  French   Spanish  Arabic  Mandarin

Learn Personal Finance: English French Mandarin Spanish

This blog will provide both students and parents with a view on what was covered and any tasks they may have at home.  Please book-mark this page so you have it handy. 

About the program:

Personal Finance was created to enable Elementary and High School students get money smart.  The program is tailored for kids at their age. Through this program they will not only learn the basics of Savings, Budgeting and understanding Debt, they will also dive deeper into money matters by learning about Banking, Mortgage, Insurance, Identity Theft and so much more!   

About the Instructor: 

The instructor for this program is Mahveen Khalil. Mahveen has been teaching our programs in schools for more than a year and is very much loved by the students. She is studying psychology at the University of Toronto. She has lived in more than 4 countries and brings a very international perspective to her classes. She is also extremely money savvy. 

She can be reached via email: Mahveen@explorerhop.com

 Outline of the course (this may change a bit based on the pace of the course):