It’s hard to manage your credit when you’ve never heard of ‘interest’, By Marsha Mercer, August 7, 2018, Stateline: “When Kentucky state Treasurer Allison Ball and a colleague talked with high school seniors last year about credit cards and other pieces of the personal finance puzzle, something wasn’t right. “We kept using the word ‘interest’ and we kept getting blank stares,” Ball recalled. Finally, she asked the students who knew what interest is. No one did…”
Tag: Financial literacy
Financial Stress Among Native Americans
Study shows high levels of financial distress among Native Americans, By David Erickson, May 2, 2017, Missoulian: “The use of high-cost borrowing methods such as payday loans and a lack of retirement and college savings plans may be keeping many in Montana’s Native American population in an endless cycle of poverty. There are more than 62,000 Native Americans in Montana, making up 6.6 percent of the state’s population, and a new national study has found that they are more likely to have high levels of financial distress compared to other demographic groups…”
Intergenerational Poverty
How poverty changes the brain, By Tara García Mathewson, April 19, 2017, The Atlantic: “You saw the pictures in science class—a profile view of the human brain, sectioned by function. The piece at the very front, right behind where a forehead would be if the brain were actually in someone’s head, is the pre-frontal cortex. It handles problem-solving, goal-setting, and task execution. And it works with the limbic system, which is connected and sits closer to the center of the brain. The limbic system processes emotions and triggers emotional responses, in part because of its storage of long-term memory. When a person lives in poverty, a growing body of research suggests the limbic system is constantly sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex, which overloads its ability to solve problems, set goals, and complete tasks in the most efficient ways…”