The littlest entrepreneurs: Money and teachable moments

When 5-year-old Christian wants to buy his mommy a birthday gift, nothing is big enough or good enough. After all, Christian’s mommy is the best in the world.

Shopping for mommy’s birthday gift with his father becomes an educational journey for the boy, and his father is ready to take advantage of the opportunity to teach his son about the concept and value of money.

Christian today is 7, and his father is Stanley Steppes, founder and CEO of Financial Literacy Partners of America, with Money Smart Kids an educational initiative Steppes has founded to inspire, motivate, empower and educate children on how to become entrepreneurs and to grow up financially wise.

“My philosophy is that money is a tool to help us reach our dreams,” says Steppes. “Money Smart Kids is not just about teaching kids to save. It’s important to understand why, to talk about the purpose.”

Steppes has written a children’s book called Christian and Daddy Go Shopping, edited by Sonya Bernard-Hollins and brightly illustrated by Kenjji Jumanne-Marshall (who goes simply by Kenjji). Along with the book, Steppes sells colorful lunch sacks, T-shirts, greeting cards, a music CD, and kid-size wrist bands that read: “I am money smart.”

It’s all part and parcel of what Steppes calls a movement. Money Smart Kids isn’t just a business idea for Steppes; it’s his passion.
 
“I want this to go national,” he says. “I want this to go global. Finances support our dreams. Financial literacy is life literacy. It’s a conversation we should be having every day.”

Steppes started his own financial career when he was not much older than his son Christian is now. He was a 9-year-old growing up in Kalamazoo, and he disliked asking his dad for money. There had to be a better way.

“I bought some 15-cent pencils at the school store, marked them up to 25 cents, and I sold them at our church,” Steppes says, smiling. “I made about 10 bucks that first Sunday, so I hired a couple other third-graders to help me sell more pencils.”

And so a financial entrepreneur and advisor was born. By the time Steppes was in Kalamazoo Central High School, teachers were taking note of the kid who was so savvy with numbers. He missed Career Day at school, but one of his teachers recommended him nonetheless for an internship at Raymond James Financial Services, and Steppes began working there his junior year, age 16, and stayed for five years.

“I didn’t enjoy marketing class in school,” Steppes recalls. “I asked the teacher instead if I could take the textbook home over the summer, and I loved the material!”

Marketing concepts so appealed to Steppes that he turned off the television and worked instead on creating a board game. He called it “Money Market,” with seven businesses competing through the stages of growing a business.

Before Steppes had reached his 21st birthday, he had passed licensing exams and state of Michigan Life & Variable Annuity requirements, becoming a certified financial professional. In 2009, he started Christian Alexander Wealth Advisors, LLC.

“But I still wasn’t content,” Steppes shrugs. “I wish someone had had something like Money Smart Kids back when I was growing up …”

What you can’t find, create yourself. It worked for Steppes. He watched his sons--Christian has a younger brother, Carter--and followed their interests, observing television characters like SpongeBob Squarepants.

“I looked at brands, but I wasn’t seeing anything about financial literacy for kids,” he says. “I thought about writing a children’s story, and I wrote the first draft in about an hour. That’s when Kenjji popped into my mind.”

Steppes had met Kenjji but once in his life. He’d met him while walking downtown and seeing the artist drawing caricatures. That was five years before.

“Two days later, a woman contacted me to discuss her finances,” Steppes says. “And it turned out, she was Kenjji’s wife!”

Must be destiny, Steppes thought, and the project progressed from there. Kenjji’s artwork had appeared in such publications such as The New York Times, Wired magazine, and others. He illustrated the book with caricatures of Steppes and his sons, Christian and Carter, and his wife Abra.

The book explains terms such as budget, currency, exchange, sales tax, and others within the story of shopping for a birthday gift.

“Recently I met with Michael Rice, the superintendent of Kalamazoo Public Schools, to talk about incorporating Money Smart Kids into schools,” says Steppes. As a result, Steppes is currently working on developing a curriculum from the Money Smart Kids materials.

“I originally saw Money Smart Kids as a program for elementary kids, but it seems to appeal to kids at all ages,” Steppes says. “There is no age barrier.”

Steppes continued to branch out with video production, putting kids to work interviewing people and producing Money Smart Kids YouTube videos. They interview experts about their businesses, money management, career readiness and entrepreneurship.

Money Smart Kids encourages kids to identify their passions, develop business ideas, make business plans, and start businesses of their own.

“Money Smart Kids is built around four principles: earning, saving, spending, giving,” says Steppes.

He has also developed a fundraising program to give kids hands-on experience raising funds for their goals. “We provide all the materials and supplies and prizes.” Top sellers are placed into a development program and work with a business coach, eventually starting their own businesses. “Layla’s Doggie Daycare was one such business,” he says. “She started it when she was 9.”

Steppes says, “We just have to spark a kid’s curiosity, then it all starts to fall into place. Money is a part of our daily life, like it or not, and yet families rarely talk to their kids about it.”

As his father talks about Money Smart Kids, Christian sits quietly nearby, writing studiously in a small notebook. He has identified his life vision, he says, grinning at the question. “I want to be a writer. I have to save my money for that.”

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For more information, visit Stanley Steppes' Financial Literacy Partners of America, L3C website here  and you can contact Steppes here.

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Zinta Aistars is creative director for Z Word, LLC, and correspondent for WMUK 102.1 FM Arts and More program. She lives on a farm in Hopkins.

Photos by Susan Andress.