At NGPF, we want to acknowledge the incredible effort that teachers have put into their classes this past year, especially through the unprecedented challenges of teaching during a pandemic. As champion educators within the NGPF community, NGPF Fellows have the option to award a 'Personal Finance Student of the Year Award' to one student who has demonstrated outstanding contributions in their personal finance class during the academic school year.

Students are selected based on the following criteria:

• Student has taken a personal finance class in the 2019-2020 school year that was taught by the NGPF Fellow who nominated them
• Student demonstrated outstanding performance in the class based on participation/academic excellence/passion for the subject matter

We'll showcase one student each Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for the duration of the summer and we'll be sharing each student's perspective on how they benefited from having personal finance education during their high school tenure.

Congratulations this week go to:

Student: Julianne Young

Teacher: Tara Kelley

School: Harwood Union High School (Stowe, VT)

- - - - - 

“The value of a personal finance class is that you can learn from real-life examples about how to save, spend, and invest your money. Most high schoolers are working some of their first jobs while taking this class and this gives them a solid understanding of how hard you have to work for your money. The students in this class know of many different ways they can save, spend, and invest their earnings even starting while they are living with their parents and may not have a consistent income. I think a common misconception is that you can’t start saving or investing until you are an adult making lots of money and living on your own. 

An action I took as a result of this class was checking my bank account online every two weeks. I do this for two reasons. The first reason is that I can get a better idea of how much money I spend each week and what I spend it on. I also do this as a check-in case somehow someone got my card number. I saved myself $150 by doing this because someone had bought things online with my card without me knowing. Since I checked my bank account I caught it early and got my money back.”

-Julianne Young

About the Author

Yanely Espinal

Born and raised by Dominican, immigrant parents in Brooklyn, Yanely is a proud product of NYC public schools. She graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in 2007 before going on to receive her bachelor's degree at Brown University in 2011. As a Teach For America corps member, Yanely taught third and fourth grade in Canarsie, Brooklyn. She received her master's degree from Relay Graduate School of Education in 2013. She spends her spare time making YouTube videos about personal finance on her channel, MissBeHelpful. Yanely also loves to dance, sew, paint, listen to podcasts, and babysit her 10 nieces and nephews!