Financial Literacy Month

February was Black History Month; March, women's history month? Anyone have a clue what April is? Hint: It's the title of this blog post!

I view the idea of Financial Literacy Month the same way I view the other "months" celebrating ethnic heritage, gender solidarity or any other cause or purpose. It's nice to take 30 days to emphasize the need for a basic level of financial smarts in this country. You need only look at our abysmal personal savings rate, how many adults live on credit and how many of our young people lack basic consumer skills like how to create and live by a budget to know that there's a serious need for financial education in this country. But having a "month" is only a start. What happens when April is over and all the marketing campaigns go away?

I'm a big advocate of making financial literacy a mandatory and integral part of the school curriculum from the earliest levels. No one should be able to graduate from high school without demonstrating that they can manage the wages they'll earn on a job. But more on that in a later post.

Here, I just want to create a list of links to Financial Literacy Month sites and other programs that are focused on personal finance education. It'll start short, and grow as people point me in the direction of more links, so be sure to tweet me any you have.

Financial Literacy Now: A campaign for financial literacy sponsored by The McGraw-Hill Companies, The New York Public Library, Working in Support of Education (W!SE), Literacy Partners, and Talking FinLit

FinancialLiteracyMonth.com: A site promoting the month, it's purpose and events from the nonprofit Money Management International

America Saves: "A nationwide campaign in which a broad coalition of nonprofit, corporate, and government groups helps individuals and families save and build wealth" -- from the site's "About Us" page. 

More to come...