As MoneySKILL Mania goes virtual, local high school students learn personal finance

By Matthew Biddle

BUFFALO, N.Y. — With experts warning that today’s staggering unemployment may lead to a prolonged recession, financial literacy is more important than ever.

That’s why the University at Buffalo School of Management and M&T Bank have partnered—since 2006—to help local high school students develop critical personal finance skills through the free MoneySKILL® program and the annual MoneySKILL Mania competition.

“From choosing a university to establishing a credit profile, these students are at a critical point in their financial lives,” says Cynthia Shore, senior assistant dean and director of alumni engagement and external relations at the UB School of Management. “This year, as teachers shifted to remote instruction due to the coronavirus, we wanted to support their efforts to teach personal finance—and help students have fun with some friendly competition—by taking MoneySKILL Mania virtual.”

Mania is a quiz show-style competition that tests students’ proficiency with concepts they’ve learned through the online MoneySKILL curriculum, offered by the American Financial Services Association (AFSA) Education Foundation. The late Lewis Mandell, former professor of finance in the School of Management, wrote the original curriculum, which has since reached more than 1 million students across all 50 states and 40 countries.

Locally, the UB School of Management and M&T Bank partner to sponsor the MoneySKILL Mania competition and a series of undergraduate honors student projects at local nonprofits, all to help Western New Yorkers improve their financial literacy.

“Personal finance skills are especially important for young people so they are prepared to make responsible decisions that will have an impact on the rest of their lives,” says Emily Frishholz, business teacher at City Honors School in Buffalo. “MoneySKILL exposes students to real-life situations and requires them to think critically and use reasoning.”

Frishholz was among the teachers in three Western New York counties who hosted the Mania competition as part of their remote instruction this spring.

For some teachers, MoneySKILL complements their existing curriculum; for others, it serves as enrichment material to infuse additional money management topics into their class. Frishholz says MoneySKILL helps to reinforce concepts in her differentiated business course for students with autism, and helps her weave new topics into another business class that wouldn’t normally cover personal finance.

At Buffalo’s Hutchinson Central Technical High School, retired 1st Sgt. Stephen Frazier has been a longtime supporter of MoneySKILL, using the online program and playing Mania each year with his Hutch-Tech Junior ROTC cadets. This year, he went even bigger—playing MoneySKILL Mania on Kahoot!, a game-based learning platform, with cadets from schools around New York State and in Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

“When our building closed, I lined up two speakers every week to give what we now call Tech Talks,” Frazier says. In these sessions, his former students, now ages 24-34, routinely brought up financial responsibility. “Almost every speaker acknowledged the value of the financial skills they gained as a cadet—including retirement, savings, student loans, insurance and investing—and how they have applied them to their life today.”

Meanwhile, Cassandra Bold, a mathematics and special education teacher at Olean High School, uses the online MoneySKILL modules with her financial algebra class and hosted Mania this year via the Zoom videoconference platform.

“For students, it’s very important for their future to be aware of the topics covered in MoneySKILL,” Bold says. “My students enjoy doing the MoneySKILL modules. They normally do well on them, and they help boost their grades. I mean, what student doesn’t love a grade boost?”