Seminar at Operation HOPE

This past Saturday I led a money management and credit seminar for adults at Operation HOPE, Harlem. Even though I have taught the computer classes there for the last twelve months, I was a little nervous leading up to the class. My prior personal financial education teaching experiences have involved working with teenagers through High Water Women’s Financial Literacy program and the recent workshop with the READ Foundation. In those circumstances when discussing credit, the subject matter has been purely conceptual. Very few, if any at all, actually used credit cards so the workshops consisted of general advice for their future use. These adults had very real issues like high levels of credit card debt and low credit scores that were preventing a successful job search.

I did a lot of preparation for the class – and was sure to brush up on a range of topics that I was less well versed on (e.g. how declaring bankruptcy affects credit score, consumer’s rights with collection agencies and settling disputes on credit reports). I knew that most of the participants would be most interested in fixing their credit reports or improving their scores, but we began at the beginning – the psychology of spending. I felt that to understand how to improve a credit score we need to understand how credit works. To understand how credit works, we need to understand our income and expenses. To understand that, we had to begin by exploring our money values and habits. Over two and half hours we covered a lot of material!

The reason I was asked to lead this class was that the former credit and money management specialist retired and his replacement had only just been hired. The new credit and money management specialist happened to attend the class on Saturday and was so helpful for any questions that I wasn’t prepared for. For example, one question posed during the class was “Does using layaway affect your credit score”. My answer/guess was no (the item hasn’t left the store so there is no promise of repayment for a received good) and the new specialist was able to confirm that response for me. He also had some great perspective on how filing for bankruptcy can continue to haunt you even after the ten year period when it shows up on your credit report.

It was a fun class and I’m definitely looking forward to the next opportunity to lead a money management and credit class!