By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
Sheila Bair, author and former chair of the FDIC, came to Northern Kentucky Monday to speak about the importance of being financially stable.
In coordination with the Kentucky Financial Empowerment Commission, Bair appeared at several locations, including Yealey Elementary in Florence, the Florence Rotary Club for lunch, the NKU Haile Women’s group, and finally a Math and Money night at Stephens Elementary School.
The visit was made possible by a grant received by the Florence Rotary Club, and also as a bonus, all the children who listened to a book read by Bair received their own autographed hardcover book to take home with them. The school library also received copies.
Bair has written a series of children’s books called Money Tales dedicated to making children think about money and how to and how not to spend that money.
“I am in favor of allowances for children,” she said. “Having children do chores around the house and receiving an allowance makes a connection in their minds between work and money, which helps them in the future.”
At Yealey Elementary, the book she read to the fifth grade students was Billy the Borrowing Blue-Footed Booby, the fourth book in the series.
In the book, Billy, who lives in the Galapagos Islands, decides he needs an umbrella to protect him from the rain while he naps. He goes to the Selling Seal, the only store in the area, and finds out that the umbrella is ten sardines, a price he deems too high.
“I’ll help you out,” said the Selling Seal, who has a sign on his booth that says ‘buy now, pay later,’ “No need to cause you trouble. Wait a month, but here’s the catch, You’ll have to pay me double.”
Billy said okay, and proceeded to catch the 20 sardines he owed for the umbrella. But then he saw a friend of his, and they had a solar-powered fan that hooked onto a chair, and naturally he wanted one. So he paid 20 sardines to get a fan from Selling Seal, and his umbrella loan doubled to forty sardines. He went out and caught 40 sardines, but again he was waylaid by a friend who had a purple-striped wig, which coincidentally cost 40 sardines, so Billy put off his loan and bought the wig.
Eventually Billy’s loan amount escalated to 320 sardines, which he couldn’t come up with no matter how hard he fished. So Selling Seal ordered the police to come and repossess all of Billy’s things to pay off the original umbrella.
Moral of the story: never borrow to buy dumb stuff. It was also pointed out that Billy’s actions helped Selling Seal become richer.
Bair asked the students questions, which garnered a variety of answers, but the point was clear and the children seemed to have understood the point — don’t be a borrowing booby.
Bair believes that as soon as children are aware of their surroundings and how things work, their parents should begin the work of helping them to understand money; they are rarely too young.
“I do think it is important to provide materials to children to help them have a healthy skepticism, and cause them to ask questions about risking their own money,” she said. “A lot of times what they hear outside is promotion, like, apply for this credit card, or here’s how to invest in the stock market. And that’s okay for later on, but I think first we need to give kids a base of how to view the importance of their money.”
She said not only are students graduating from high school lacking basic financial knowledge, but very many adults are woefully ignorant of financial issues.
“I have had parents and teachers tell me they have learned a lot from these books, too,” said Bair. “They also said they wished they had these books when their children were young.”
Sheila Bair is founding chair of the Systemic Risk Council, which monitors and advocates for reforms to foster financial stability.
She has been called the second most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine, and Time magazine described her as the Little guy’s protector-in-chief.
Bair was given the JFK Library Profiles in Courage award because as FDIC Chair she steered the agency through the “worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
She wrote a book called Bull by the Horns which gave an account of the years 2006 through 2011. She has written other books, one called Zombie Banks, and one called Bullies of Wall Street.
Other than the book she read at Yealey Elementary Monday, Blair has other children’s books in the series, including Rock, Brock and the Savings Shock, Isabel’s Car Wash, Princess Persephone loses the Castle, and two that came out in October, Shark Scam and Princess Persephone’s Dragon Ride Stand.