The EverFi Program Provides Basic Financial Education to High School Students

Cardinal Bank certified 200 participants in the EverFi program at a North Virginia High School this week.

The course was available, free of charge, in sixty North Virginia Schools thanks to a partnership between Cardinal Bank, the Genworth Foundation, North Virginia's State Department of Education and a variety of nonprofit and school district-affiliated organizations.

These organizations work together in order to provide teachers with the training they require in order to successfully implement and maintain the program for students.

Micheal Bishop, the school's principle, spoke at the graduation event.

Tom Davidson, CEO at EverFi, said the concepts Everfi teaches are ones that students can apply immediately after graduation, and sometimes even sooner. Personal financing and credit are now necessary parts of core education requirements.

As the My Money, My Future workbook explains, high school is a great time for young adults to start planning their financial futures. While everyone will make different decisions, and have a different definition of success, the important thing is to approach the years following high school with a plan, and stick to it.

My Money, My Future workbook helps students with this task. Students learn to budget and exercise wise spending. It even provides basic introductions to more complex topics such as investment, managing your credit cards, financing post-secondary education and managing the cost of living as an adult.

The Web site provides important resources such as a debt calculator, a guidebook for how to organize events at school, and quizzes to help students figure out whether they have tendencies toward conservative or risky investment strategies. Another section provides students with a small table that they can fill in, allowing them to provide a rough sketch of how their finances work at present.

Cardinal Bank has been a financial education advocate to elementary and middle school students since 2005. In 2011, they expanded their initiative to high schools.