May 11, 2015

NGPF Celebrates: Sue Suttich, Tigard High School (OR)

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week 2015, NGPF is celebrating the hard work and commitment to personal finance education exhibited by our nation’s teachers by featuring just a few members of our NGPF educator community. 

Featured Teacher: Sue Suttich, Business Department Coordinator

School: Tigard High School, Tigard, Oregon

What is your favorite part of teaching personal finance?

I really enjoy that this class is so hands on and relevant. I am able to give a lot of examples from mistakes I have made in my own life as well as examples of what I have now taught my own children. The students can definitely see how this can make a difference in their lives and are really engaged because of how much it hits them as real life stuff! I use a lot of computer apps to keep them engaged and have a great connection with Financial Beginnings, a non-profit in town, that sends me community volunteers to talk on all kinds of subjects like banking, credit, insurance, investing, etc. This connection to the community also helps the students see how important this information is since volunteers are spending their time coming in and teaching it because they believe it is so important for them to know.

 

If you had to give a first year personal finance teacher a piece of advice, what would it be?

Be honest! I talk about how much wealthier I would be right now if someone had given me this advice! I also give examples of how much has changed and how much easier it will be for them to make good decisions now that they can have automatic deposit of their paycheck and automatic payment of bills. They can easily make payments to their IRA with their company transferring their money for them. I also talk about how I love nice clothes and cute shoes like they do, but I have to make goals and budget to meet these goals, just like they will have to. It’s a really fun class to teach, and you feel like everyone gets something from it.

What’s been your greatest accomplishment as a personal finance teacher?

I play the H&R Block Challenge in my class. Students are given a computer simulation where they get a paycheck, have to pay bills, have to decide how much to put in their 401(k), decide on how much of their credit card bill to pay, and also are given real life scenarios like their car gets in a fender bender and they need to pay their insurance deductible. They get deductions and fines if they are late paying a bill or go over on their credit card limit. They also are given financial quizzes and get scored on their correct answers. At the end of the two month simulation the top students in the country won scholarships for their personal finance knowledge. I just had a student finish #8 in the country out of 33,000 students playing, and he won a $20,000 scholarship for college! I am so proud of him, and he is so incredibly excited that he did so well and won this money to help him pay for college.

 

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About the Author

Jessica Endlich

When I started working at Next Gen Personal Finance, it's as though my undergraduate degree in finance, followed by ten years as an educator in an NYC public high school, suddenly all made sense.

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