Anna Genov teaches kids and teens about finances with nonprofit Money Lessons for Teens.
Photos courtesy of Anna Genov
She’s not a financial advisor, but a New York City teen is helping her peers learn steps to secure a better financial future.
Anna Genov, a junior at Dominican Academy, grew up seeing how people were affected by poor financial choices.
“I’ve been a witness to a lot of suffering due to poor financial decisions and kind of misunderstandings in regards to how to handle money properly,” said Genov. “I think that by living in New York, there’s a lot of homeless people, which is very unfortunate, and there’s also a lot of wealthy people. So I think that seeing this socio-economic gap has really motivated me to try and bridge that through education and financial literacy and equalize this playing field for everyone.”
Genov’s solution was to start Money Lessons for Teens last year. Despite what the name suggests, Money Lessons for Teens is a nonprofit that offers free presentations for kids as young as third grade to high school-aged children on a variety of topics, including budgeting, saving and investing.
Genov started by giving presentations at public spaces or out of her home, quickly branching out to schools and community centers. Her lessons are developed with whatever age group she is teaching at that time, and while the themes stay consistent, the level of complexity changes with the age groups.
“If it’s younger kids, I talk a lot about lowering expenses, like turning off the lights when they leave the apartment, not keeping the water running, making grocery lists, counting their money,” said Genov. “Then for older kids, I go a lot more investing, student debt, which is a very difficult subject, and stuff that’s in their day-to-day basis. Also simple and compound interest, taking out a loan, steps that are important for kids to kind of just keep in mind while they transition from being teenagers to being…
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