Bulldog Credit Union: The Fun Branch
Published: June 23rd, 2016
Bulldog Credit Union, our student run branch, is also known as the fun branch at Streator Onized Credit Union. Why are we the fun branch? We are the fun branch because we are young professionals impacting the lives of our youth in fun educational activities within the Streator-land area.
What is financial literacy?
Financial Literacy is an important topic that we are striving to teach our youth. Financial literacy is the ability to understand how money works in the world. It is the way one can earn or make money, manage money, and invest money to make more money. So how does this play a big role at SOCU? This plays a huge role at SOCU, because we literally have an SOCU branch in our local high school.
What do we do at the Streator High School?
We reach out to young adults by giving them classroom presentations regarding financial education. One big topic that we make sure young adults understand is budgeting. Budgeting is a crucial topic that requires time and preparation. We make sure that they understand budgeting by presenting a budgeting simulation called Mad City Money (Video). Mad City Money is a real-life event fair that allows for students to budget their monthly household income, pay their bills, payoff their debts, and put money aside for retirement. This event helps them once they start working and go off to college.
Financial literacy is the ability to understand how money works in the world. It is the way one can earn or make money, manage money, and invest money to make more money.
Beyond BCU
The high school is not the only school we attend regarding financial literacy. We want to impact the lives of many young individuals, so we reach out to the elementary schools as well. What can SOCU possibly talk about at these elementary schools? Depending on the age level of the classroom we incorporate fun classroom activities with educational pieces.
For instance, M&M (© 2016 Mars, Incorporated and its Affiliates) budgeting has been a fun activity for 4th graders through 6th graders. This activity allowed for the student to use basic math skills and have fun going shopping. Each student received a bag of M&M’s. The different M&M colors symbolized a certain amount of money. The different colors also symbolized different department stores. For example, if there are 6 yellow M&M’s, and the yellow M&M’s are worth $5.00 each, then you will have $30.00 to spend at the yellow department store. The students love this fun activity because they focus on purchasing the material they want. Best of all, they focused on this activity because they receive M&M’s for lunch.
Bulldog Credit Union is a fun filled SOCU branch that stresses financial literacy.
