MONEY CLIPPED

The Institute For Truth In Accounting has teamed up with mtvU to create InDebtEd, a national campaign to raise awareness among young Americans about our national debt, our personal debt, and how the two are related.

They present the harsh facts about how indebted our national government is, why, and what it means for young Americans in particular. This is supplemented by concrete actions individuals can take to help change things and provides links to additional resources.

In addition to all that, they are sponsoring a contest, the Indebted Digital Challenge in which $10,000 will be awarded to the person or team that comes up with the best “original idea for a video game that addresses the nation’s fiscal crisis”.

The website also lets you watch for free the 30 minute condensed version of the documentary I.O.U.S.A.. Here’s the trailer:

Even if you’re not a “young” American, you can and should educate yourself on America’s staggering debt troubles and find out how you can be part of the solution. I suggest you check out the web site of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. The non-partisan foundations objective is to “…work to bring Americans together to find sensible, long-term solutions that transcend age, party lines and ideological divides in order to achieve real results” as related to national and personal debt.

Its going to take more than just a new president from a different party to tackle our current national debt issues. The financial future of America is in jeopardy and its time for all Americans to get informed on just how big the problem is what must to be done to turn the tide.

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The current economic crisis has highlighted the dangers of having a populace that is seriously lacking in financial literacy.

What we’ve seen in the past year should serve as a wake-up call to citizens, employers, institutions, and governments that finance education has to become a priority if America is to escape the current crisis and avoid similar ones in the future.

In the media we are already starting to see much more time being devoted to explaining financial and economic terms, practices, and, legal issues. Hopefully, this is the beginning of an awakening in the American people to the fact that what we don’t know about economics and personal finances can hurt us and and as a result resolve to educate ourselves and others.

To aid that end, here is a list of online financial education resources that you can can and should share with your friends, families, teachers and principals, bosses and HR departments, and anyone else you know in need of financial education or who has influence over financial literacy initiatives. You can print out this page or e-mail the link to this post by copying the url from your address bar above and pasting it into the body of your e-mail.

Institute of Consumer Financial Education
www.financial-education-icfe.org

The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy
www.jumpstart.org

National Council on Economic Education
www.ncee.net

Feed The Pig
www.feedthepig.org

National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE)
www.nefe.org

360 Degrees Of Financial Literacy
www.360financialliteracy.org

Federal Reserve Education
www.federalreserveeducation.org/fred/

InCharge Education Foundation
www.inchargefoundation.org

MyMoney.gov
www.mymoney.gov

Institute for Financial Literacy
www.financiallit.org

If you or your business are in a position to help financially, please consider making contributions to one of more of the above.

I’d also like to urge you to take a few minutes to contact your political leaders and let them know you think America needs to step up its financial literacy efforts. Click here to contact your elected officials. That link will help you find the contact info for your U.S. representative and senators, state legislators, and governor.

Ignorance is a very real threat to the financial security of America both now and in the future. Its time we all did our part end that ignorance.

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