Source: http://ebusiness.byu.edu/newsletter.php?newsletterID=52&articleID=176
Schemes of "how to make it rich" are all too common on the title pages of popular finance books out on the market today. This is one reason why Drs. Brian Sudweeks and Scott Sampson of the Marriott School of Management decided to create an educational resource that teaches more practical finance practices.
"Whenever you have anybody selling some type of information about personal finance you have to ask yourself where their biases are and what they are trying to sell," says Dr. Sampson. "However, we don't have a hidden agenda and we aren't selling anything. We just want to help people be wise consumers."
Their project, the Personal Finance Project, is sponsored by the center and presents an online curriculum with finance principles that are based on doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Saints. The principles emphasize living prudently, avoiding debt, making educated financial goals and imparting money to the needy.
"It's a good resource to help people get their financial houses in order," says Dr. Sudweeks. "It won't tell them what stocks to invest in, and it won't tell them what mutual funds to invest in, but it will tell them the principles and processes that lead to good habits and successful investment portfolios."
The site's curriculum is divided into seven sections: credit cards and debt, time value of money, insurance, home auto and financing education, investments, retirement and estate planning and giving. The curriculum is prefaced by an introduction that briefly states the financial perspectives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that underlie the content of the entire site.
"If you understand the gospel it will take you a long ways to understanding principles of finance," says Dr. Sampson. "They are based on values of self-restraint, understanding of resources and wise financial management."
Interactive tools such as budget spreadsheets, worksheets for creating a financial plan and financial calculators allow the reader to adjust the information on the site according to their own financial needs. Additional resources include talks given by general authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and specialists in the Marriott School. Viewers are also encouraged to respond to content by selecting the comments option included on the page and giving their feedback.
"The vision of this is to reach a very broad audience even though it was designed around BYU students who have a certain amount of quantitative ability and a certain amount of background," says Dr. Sampson. "We would eventually like to make it accessible to people from many different cultural and educational backgrounds."
The content was originally developed by Dr. Sudweeks as a tool to help bishops of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in instructing their congragation members to get their financial houses in order. The content was expanded and integrated into the curriculum of a 200-level course on personal finance that he has taught at the Marriott School for several years. That course was put on CD and over 2,000 copies have been distributed to students and associates of the Marriott School and BYU.
In December 2002, Drs. Sampson and Sudweeks proposed that the curriculum be put onto a web-based platform in order to increase accessibility, facilitate review and update and hit a wider audience. Marriott School students Monty Shaffer and Armando Gutierrez have assisted them with development of the website.
The content for the personal finance site is continuing to be reviewed by editors and will prospectively be released on the Marriott School website in the next couple of months with additional articles, teaching tools and a hyperlink glossary for individuals with less background in finance.
If you wish to contribute to this project by editing the personal finance content, please contact the eBusiness Center at ebusiness@byu.edu. This newsletter will do a follow-up article when the site is officially released.
