Teens, Gen Z, and Finances with Dan Sheeks
Teens, Gen Z, and Finances with Dan Sheeks
April is Financial Literacy month and I always say that Financial Literacy is like regular literacy, it needs to be taught from and early age, preferably practiced and supported at home, and continually learned as you grow older and your financial decisions get more complicated.
Financial literacy is the core mission of The Financial Gym and it’s also the core mission for today’s guest, Dan Sheeks owner and founder of SheeksFreaks an online community to help young people live their best lives by making smart money decisions. He shares some of his best tips for helping Gen Z’ers, and really anyone else, become more financially literate.
What are we drinking?
Dan - Modus Operandi Beer
Shannon - Boxed Wine
Podcast Notes
Financial literacy for Gen Z is Dan’s main mission. His purpose is to educate as many high school and college aged people as possible about personal finance, passive income, frugality, and financial independence. He wants them to know they have options.
Dan teaches business and marketing classes in a high school near Denver and he has been doing that for 18 years. He was a business major in college and never thought he would be a teacher.
In his 20s, he decided that giving back was something he wanted to do and teaching seemed to fit. He was passionate about business and marketing and went back to school to get his teaching license.
Currently, Dan’s high school is hybrid. Half of the kids are in school one day and the other half are in school the next day. On their off day, they are at home completing assignments they were given the day before.
There are a lot of skills that need to be taught for someone to be financially literate. There is a systemic issue and students are not getting this information. Some schools require a semester of personal finance education, but the majority do not.
The website www.ngpf.org has good information and resources for educators, community members, and legislators. Only seven states require financial education credit for high school graduation.
Financial education is not a requirement in Colorado, but Dan’s school offers personal finance as an elective. Fewer than 25% of the students in his school will take the class. Dan has presented proposals to make it a requirement and to staff it in his school, but it comes down to money and politics as the reason it is not required across the country.
Many parents don’t understand how important financial literacy is and they don’t encourage their kids to take a class on it. The young people who need the class most are the least likely to take it.
Colleges often require incoming freshman to have classes in language or other subjects, but they aren’t requiring financial literacy classes.
Adam Carroll made a documentary call Broke, Busted, and Disgusted, which addresses the student loan crisis.
If your parents saved $100,000 for you for college, offer for them to keep $50,000 and give you $50,000 to buy a rental property instead. If a parent doesn’t have the money for school, but they can co-sign on a loan, the loan would be better used toward a house than a college education.
Typically fewer than two thirds of students finish a degree, which means students are leaving school not only without a degree but with student loan debt.
If we all agree that personal finance education is critical for students and adults, the best way to make change happen is for community members to reach out to school principals/superintendents/school boards and advocate for personal finance education in the school system. It should be a minimum requirement of one semester.
Educators themselves can do very little to make that change. It needs to come from the tax payers.
Many adults didn’t get this education and are left to figure it out on their own. There are a lot of things parents can do, even if they aren’t confident in their own financial literacy.
At the very least, include your child in your household budgeting expenses. Eventually, graduate them to paying the bills and transferring the money. Share your budget and investments with them. Create an economic system in the home for your child. Getting children involved gives them more perspective.
If we coddle and protect our children from money, when they go into the real world as adults, they are not going to make good decisions. Get your 15, 16, 17 year old on your credit card account as an authorized user and involve them when you pay it off each month.
Show your child your credit score in the three credit bureaus and tell them what goes into it. You need to help them with the skills and decisions, so they learn to build credit wisely. How are you educating your child financially?
A credit card is a payment method. It only becomes a debt when you don’t pay it off. You can get your child on your account and set a limit of $100. Teach them about credit utilization and how they shouldn’t have more than 30%, or $30, on that card. Teach them to check their credit score on a regular basis.
If you have a conversation with your parents and you don’t get a good vibe from them, it might be best for you to wait until you are 18 years old to start building credit. You don’t want to be on their account if they are not paying off their card each month or if their credit utilization is high.
Money is abstract with Gen Z, because it is all virtual. It is just digits to them, because they don’t use cash and it is easy to spend. Dan teaches students to track income and expenses and looking at their banking app on a daily basis. This is not to obsess about it but to be aware.
When it comes to investing, there is a timeframe in a child’s life when they are young and investing in their favorite company’s stock is very exciting and fun to do. Many people eventually move to mutual funds, because they are more diversified, then they move to index funds.
Whatever you can do to shorten that timeframe to get to index funds, do that as quickly as you can. If you start off investing in low cost index funds, you will win the game. People who trade stocks regularly cannot beat the return on low cost index funds.
Dan’s Sheeks Freaks community is specifically for Gen Z, which is ages 15 to 25, and it isn’t just about personal finance. At the core, his community is about financial independence decades before age 65.
Takeaway: My biggest takeaway is the value of normalizing money conversations from the earliest age possible. Even if you as the parent don’t feel highly confident teaching the subject matter, you can still learn alongside your child.
Random Three Questions
If you were not teaching high school, what would you be doing?
What is a show you recently binged that you would recommend?
This is your last meal on earth. What is it going to be?
Connect with Dan
Website: Sheeks Freaks
LinkedIn: Dan Sheeks
Bigger Pockets: Dan Sheeks
Instagram: @sheeksfreaks
If you have any topics you would like me to cover on this podcast, or if you’d like to get in the financially naked hot seat, I encourage you to email me to Shannon@fingyms.com, or join the private Martinis and Your Money Facebook group, and let me know what you want to hear.
2020 was a challenging year, and if money was one of those challenges for you, please don’t let 2021 be more of the same. Despite a global pandemic, we witnessed Financial Gym clients achieve amazing goals all year long. We’ve worked with over 6,000 clients at this point and we’ve literally seen it all and would love to help you achieve your financial dreams in 2021. So head over to, or send friends to, financialgym.com to get set up today.