Improving financial literacy one question at a time
Students from several Northwoods high schools faced off at the 2024 Finance and Investment Challenge Bowl at Nicolet College. Photos courtesy of School District of Rhinelander.
By Eileen Persike
Editor
RHINELANDER – Students from five Northwoods high schools tested their knowledge of personal finance and economics at the 12th annual Finance and Investment Challenge Bowl held last week at Nicolet College. The quiz bowl style competition is a program by the nonprofit Asset Builders of America. It was founded over 20 years ago by two men working in financial investor protection who wanted to overcome negative effects that a lack of wealth and financial literacy was creating. Asset Builders’ mission is to improve financial literacy across the state.
“It’s really essential to people’s success in society going out of high school to either go to college or work,” said co-founder Richard Entenmann. “They’ll be handling money, making money decisions and it’s not all that hard, really. It’s not like rocket science to learn, although it may not be intuitive so a little bit of effort has such a benefit.”
Julia Eaker is a sophomore at Three Lakes High School, currently taking accounting, a class she “absolutely loves.” She’s looking forward to answering accounting questions during the competition, and learning more about business in the coming years.
“My mom owns Deja Brew in Three Lakes, so it’s good to get that aspect of business,” Eaker said. “Especially with accounting, maybe I can do her books one day.”
The questions are what Entenmann describes as mainstream classic personal finance; credit, banking, savings, budgeting.
“Economics underlies all of that so basic economics, basic supply-demand, stuff like that, is really important to understand how money works and how personal finance works,” Entenmann said. “We sprinkle in some current events to keep it fun.”
Rhinelander High School junior John Turek and a group of friends competed last year for the first time. In their seeding round this year the team won decisively over a team from Northland Pines. Turek is looking forward to answering the questions.
“Personal finance questions, investing, retirement accounts, kind of simple stuff like that – or anything with accounting. I’m currently in accounting so I think I should do well with those,” Turek said. “We should definitely get more teams here next year; it’s really fun. I enjoy it a lot.”
The students competed for trophies and prizes. The event was sponsored by Nicolet Bank, Peoples State Bank, US Bank, Associated Bank, Ripco Credit Union, Co-Vantage Credit Union, Boyd Financial Services, Heck Capital Advisors, WPS, DFI, NGPF, Rhinelander Partners in Education, Nicolet College and Wisconsin Bankers Foundation.
Teams from Three Lakes and Rhinelander placed first and second, respectively. Both will travel to Madison for the state competition.
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