STEP 2018 Classroom #3 Know Your Number!

*Hey bro, do you know what those figures for? Nope, no idea at all! *

Another Saturday morning, it was a great and awesome morning for Tifa and me and it also means is our time to volunteer ourselves in STEP 2018 by Cybercare. It was 3rd classroom session for all the youth and this session will guide them on how to manage their personal finance. I didn't attend the 2nd classroom as I had some personal matter that needs to attend.

What is The Topic for 3rd Classroom?

In this session, we will play a game that simulates the real-world environment where youth will go out to work and earn their salary and they need to learn how to manage their own personal finance, let them feel the relationship with their money.

Some youth pawn their handbag and watches!

As usual, the lead coach will brief all of us before the game starts. Every facilitator will be given a role such as a banker, employers, expenses department, investment counter, and pawn shop. Each of the roles will have a specific Google form to keep track youth expenses and income. Whenever youth come to our counter, we will ask them what they want and key in information in the Google form and submit it, then the lead coach will access all data from his laptop.

Then the lead coach brief all the youth on what is this game about, how to play, what they need to do, and why is this game important in your life to survive. Every youth will be given a piece of paper with columns pre-defined for them to key in their expenses, cash, investment, and loan. The lead coach briefs them on how to keep track those expenses which will be useful for them in future as well.

Let's The Fun Begin!

At the beginning in order for youth to have money they first need to have a job, to earn their salary monthly. There was a total of 4 companies were hiring, which is Accenture, Ascella, Cybercare, and Grab/Uber. Youth need to write it down their expenses in the paper. At the same time, facilitators will also record it in the Google form so it tallies at the end without cheating or argument.

The lead coach will have the master information of all Google form in his laptop and he consolidates all records and projectile on the whiteboard so that everyone can see everyone saving, cash, expenses on the board. Oh ya, every youth was given a number to represent them so that it will more easy to maintain in Google form rather than putting their own name on the excel sheet.

After they earned their first salary they have a choice to go for stock market investment, taking a loan to buy a car, buy a house, take up a personal loan to do other stuff. To make this game more fun the lead coach actually create a stock market speculation to the youth and told them

Buy stock market now! Sell them later.

Being very naive of all the youth follow the instruction by the lead coach. Some smart one invests all their saving into the stock market and hopefully able to double or triple their saving. Unfortunately, after a few minutes, the lead coach said

Stock market crash now!!

At first, they don't understand what is stock market crash until the lead coach updates the stock market price on the excel. I saw few of them were almost collapse after looking at the price of the stock. One of the youth come straight to the lead coach and told him

"I buy 1000 share and now you drop the price so much! why?!"

He seems very frustrated. Well, that what a lot of people do in the real world too when they get the so-called "tips" from other people without further understand the company or without further analysis it.

Do You Know What T.I.P.S Mean?

Sound familiar? How many of you get stock market tips from others and had earned a lot constantly? Yes, you might be earning now, what I'm saying here is the long-term holding power. Are you prefer getting the right knowledge and analysis yourself or you would prefer to get "insider news/tips" from others all the time?

The Debrief

The first session ended after about 1-hour ++. The lead coach did a debrief with them on what had happened, who were happy with their financial status now, who were unhappy with what had happened, and who would like to share their experience. Few of them were happy because they bought lots of investment even though they lose a lot as well due to the stock market crash. They didn't mention why they were happy so I guess maybe they learned the stock market behaviour?

After few sharing, looking at the whiteboard I notice not much youth was taking up car loan or house loan. I notice a lot of them have negative cash flow which was because they spend all their hard earned money to buy the stock market and lost all of them. Besides, I also notice a lot of them were putting their money in the bank rather than doing investment or buying a house. I notice some of their saving almost hit 300-400k in the bank. I guess they don't know a house is an asset. Well, I think they were happy with the amount of the money in the bank.

2nd Round! Apply What You Learned!

Second session activity was for youth to come out with a business plan to organize a movie in a cinema. All the youth were required to plan how much budget they need to run the movie event. This is part of their job challenge which is going to happen on 28 April 2018 Detail here.

The lead coach gave them 4 different basic roles for them to plan such as registration counter, photobooth, food & beverage, and fundraising. Each group needs to do the same business plan then they were required to present to all of them. After that, all the youth will form into different groups to perform their task on that day itself.

I myself joined a very interesting group. In my group there are 2 different leaders style members, one being a very detailed person and another one being very high-level planning person. During the planning stage, both of them were having some mini arguments because of different opinion towards each other. Due to limited time I have to step in and guide them.

They start with registration counter, it was pretty easy, you need 1 person to do the registration for the guest, 1 collects money from guests, 1 gives out the movie ticket. The entire process was pretty straightforward.

Next, the photo booth. This was the funniest for me and the reason was that I think they like the photo so much and went too detail and too much customizable for guests, here was what they suggest

Member A: See, let's have some customizable photos for guest. How about 1 photo with 4 frames cost MYR 7, and 1 photo with 5 frames cost MYR 8?
Member B: Sound good! How do you want to arrange the photos? Are you plan to allow them to arrange themselves or we set for them?
Member A: Good idea, let me think about it!
Me: Have you guys use photobooth before?
Member A & B: Yes!
Me: Did those photo booths allow you choose how to arrange your photos?
Member A: Erm, no.
Me: And why you guys want to allow guests to customize and make it so complicated?
Member B: Because we want to give them a special photo which gives them a good memory.
Me: If you are the customer on that day and I tell you "Hi, which photo design would you want? Do you want to design yourself or would you prefer we design for you? Would you prefer 4 photos or 5 photos in a single photo?" Do you think you still want to buy after all the complicated description?
Member A & B: Pause Ok, that's too complicated. We just do one design for them and that's it.
Me: That's sound easy right?

After the entire conversation, they decided to make it easy. Sometimes their idea is brilliant but they forget to put themselves into different people point of view.

F&B was one of the youth favourite topics, all of them were very excited to blast out ideas such as mineral water, coke, Pepsi, super ring, potatoes chip, healthy snacks and so on. The list keeps increase and increase, at one point I asked them

Me: How many packets you guys plan to buy for each of them?
Member A: 150 packets!
Me: Meaning each guest will get 1 mineral water, coke, Pepsi, super ring, potatoes chip, and healthy snack? What if the guest doesn't want so many or some just want mineral water? What are you guys going to do with the extra one?
Member A: Oh ya! You are right. Guys, we need to plan nicely how many packets we need to buy.

The entire group silent for a moment as they couldn't get the amount they need to buy. Hence, I give them a suggestion to make it simple.

Finally the last one - Fundraising. What this counter does is to raise fund for the event as they need money to buy food, beverage, photo props, and so on. Since this is a business plan, they are going to do some sales pitching. So they calculated how much they need to run the movie event. Next would be every group will be given 2-3 minutes to pitch their plan on how they run the event and how much budget they need to run the event.

The session was until about 4 pm and the lead coach gave them some ideas on the floor plan, the location of the cinema, where they should set up their counter and so on.

Let's Call It A Day

Every session we ended with some dances! Yes! This is the part where we facilitators are very excited about it. I'm one of it and I don't like to dance previously and don't know why I like loving it now! Some of the youth are very excited about the dance as well, you know when you look at their face. I'm always very happy to see them smile and laugh in each session.

How Good Is Your Personal Finance Management? Are You Putting All Your Money In Bank?

P.S: If you would like to know more about personal finance, I recommend you follow @tifaong, she is writing a series of posts about finance management post here

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Note: All photos are taken by me unless stated otherwise