I asked my daughter Allison if she would share her perspective on using the Money Savvy Pig piggy bank in her childhood and the impact that has made on her adult life.   Here is what Allison had to say:

My mom is the mother of the Money Savvy Pig piggy bank. And, as you might expect, we, her daughters, were her guinea pigs when she started teaching kids about money. My first-grade class was her laboratory! I am now 26 years old, several years out of college and well into my career. Teaching first graders about money was a very novel concept when she started 18 years ago. But one that empowered me and my classmates to understand money.

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This post first appeared on Right About Money.

The Dow has been setting record highs regularly this autumn. But it remains an awful long way from one million. Then again—maybe not so long after all, Warren Buffett suggests.

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Dan Kadlec’s column this week on the end of the “myRA” retirement opportunity got me thinking. Kadlec suggests that the demise of the program is likely due to a lack of financial education. I agree – but I think there is more to it than that. I suspect this is human nature at play. Think about how hard it is to get people to enroll in their 401(k) with a match and invested in real growth options.

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This post first appeared on RightAboutMoney.com

In recent decades, more education has meant higher salaries. But will that be the case going forward? Part of any financial literacy course in high school should look at student debt in relation to the earning power of a chosen field of study.

This is especially true of graduate school, where loans can really pile up. On the surface, the math looks fantastic. Over their lifetime, those who earn a graduate degree, on average, earn $400,000 more than those with no more than an undergraduate degree, according to researchers  Anthony P. Carnevale, Stephen J. Rose and Ban Cheah at Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

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