It's Oscars weekend, and here is a documentary you should watch leading up to the event if you haven't yet!  NGPF released the documentary “The Most Important Class you Never Had” this week.  

Financial Literacy

• CNBC covered the release of the CEE biannual Survey of the States on Wednesday.

“Research shows that these requirements make a difference,” said Nan Morrison, the president and CEO of the Council for Economic Education, which released its biannual Survey of the States on Wednesday, a detailed state-by-state look at the economics and personal finance standards and requirements in K–12 state education systems."

• Here are the details on North Carolina’s law establishing personal finance as a high school graduation requirement. (Watauga Democrat)

Personal Finance

• What is the biggest lie in personal finance? According to Nick Maggiuli from Of Dollars And Data, the key to financial independence is way more complicated than simply cutting spending. (There are some great graphics in this one.) Key points: the bottom 20% spent more than they earned on basic necessities, and almost half of the population spent more than they earned in 2018.
• Are you ever asked “should I loan money to a family member or friend?” Or perhaps borrow? A blog from Mint addresses that question.

Economics

• The jobs report for January was published this morning. While the number of new jobs reported was higher than expected at 225,000, the unemployment rate went back up to 3.6%. (Have your kids try to figure out how that happens!) (Yahoo Finance)
• This fact may come in handy on your next trivia night: The January 2020 jobs figures will include same sex couples in its count of married couples (buried in the footnotes) for the first time! (CNN)
• Do you need to add some meat to your discussion of human capital? Here is an interesting study from UCLA Anderson School of Management looking at the distribution of college graduates and relative prosperity of the cities in which they live.

Investing

• Instagram generated over 25% of Facebook’s revenue in 2019. (The Verge)
• Fortune (free but requires registration) takes a look at the potential impact retiring baby boomers will (or won’t) have on the stock market as they liquidate their portfolios.

"The surge of baby boomer retirees will also present challenges for the financial markets. The baby boomers own the bulk of stocks in this country, which makes sense since they have had longer to accumulate financial assets than younger generations. But this fact troubles many people, who worry that once baby boomers go to sell their stocks en masse, the market will crash."

Careers

•  Health care programs look for ways to help entry level nursing assistants work their way into better paying health jobs. (Inside Higher Ed)

Gen Z

• Ladders reported on an interesting study by EY differentiating Gen Z from milliennials. While it is aimed at employers, educators may find this information helpful, even if they have already figured some of this out themselves.

Education

• Here is a sobering statistic: the number of children in public school who experienced homelessness at some point during the 2017-18 school year reached 1.5 million, more than double since the statistic was first measured in 2004-5. (NYTimes-subscription) (Complete survey from the National Center for Homeless Eduction)
  

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