Millionaire's Club teaches students to invest in their futures

By A. David Dahmer

"Do you remember how things used to look in the 70s?" asked PEOPLE Program's "Millionaire's Club" guest speaker Nedra Bobo to a group of students who were all born in the mid-90s.
Bobo was in the process of describing an ugly orange, green, and yellow carpeting that she ripped out of an old place to increase the value of a property she was selling. It was all part of her PowerPoint presentation to PEOPLE program kids called "Real Estate Development: A Proven Avenue to Wealth and Influence" on June 29 at Grainger Hall on the UW-Madison campus.
The students seemed generally interested in the presentation but noticeably perked up when Bobo added: "On this particular place, we profited $27,000 on it."
And as the students perked up, they began to ask more questions: "What's an ARV? What's a referral fee? What is birdogging? How do I get into the real estate field?”
Getting young people interested in their economic futures is just one of the many goals of the Millionaires Club program, a workshop series put on by Asset Builders of America Inc. And Bobo has been just one of the many celebrity speakers for The Millionaires Club workshop, which emulates the real world by providing performance-based incentives and rewards.
"The Millionaire’s Club is an intensive economic education curriculum," said Robert Wynn, founder and director of Asset Builders and the instructor for the course.
The  economic education curriculum, he said, includes five different sub-topics including personal finance, understanding credit, entrepreneurship, investing, and basic economic concept.
This is the first year that Wynn has brought the Millionaire's Club to the middleschoolers at the UW PEOPLE program. This summer the students have been learning about topics like "Saving and Investing," "Setting Performance Goals," "Methods to Minimize Risk," "Top-10 Stock Investment Rules," and much more.
Three hours a day can be a little much for youngsters to sit and listen to one person, so Wynn has organized interesting field trips this summer — to the Smith Barney office, the main Madison library, and the UW Credit Union — and exciting guest speakers like Bobo, entrepreneur Henry Sanders, publisher and novelist Rumont McKay.
Throughout the course, the class works from the text of "Money Working For You" written by Bob Bacarella.
"He's been giving these books to Asset Builders for free knowing not only are we trying to get them into the hands of young minority children, but that we're working with these children to get them to actively understand and implement the concepts of that book," Wynn said.
 "We will culminate everything with a number of interactive programs where kids can show what they have learned," Wynn added. "We're going to have a series of presentations by the students on key concepts they have learned and every student has been assigned one or two key economic concepts."
On July 2, the students played the Finance and Investment Challenge Bowl, a Jeopardy-style tournament where kids divide up into teams and use buzzers. "We pretty much use the format of the African American History Challenge Bowl except all of the content will deal with economic content," Wynn said.
Cash prizes were given to the winners. Everybody on the winning team got ten dollars; the losing team got five dollars.
Wynn has found that programs like Millionaire's Club fill a tremendous need in the community.
"We're finding that there is a real lack of teaching of personal finance and economic-type content inside urban school districts," Wynn says. "So, the Asset Builders program is designed to compliment what children learn in their traditional curriculum and help them by giving them broader content of the world economy, mathematics, and investment education."
Young people have an incredible opportunity to save money. "Compounding can really work in their favor; so we've taught the kids the ‘Rule of 72,’" Wynn says. "The growth of their wealth is a function on the rate of return they can get on their investment capital and the amount of time they have to receive that rate of return. It's a no-brainer that the younger you are, the more time you have to build wealth through compounding."
When this summer session ends, the Millionaire's Club won't. The Madison Metropolitan School District has contracted with Asset Builders to established two non-school, site-based Millionaire's Clubs that will start in September. One site will be at the Lussier Community Education Center under the guidance of Stan Woodward. The second one is tentatively planned for the Villager Mall with the classes hosted at the Financial Education Center. Wynn himself will be the host of the Villager Mall's Millionaire's Club and it will serve the Boys and Girls Club population.
And the youngsters will continue to use the knowledge they have learned through the course, too. Some of the very same PEOPLE program kids will be invited to speak at the annual Money Conference which will take place on Aug. 15 at Wright Middle School.
In that way, they will follow in the words of musician Wyclef Jean, which Bobo placed on the big screen at the conclusion of her Power Point presentation to the students:
"I come from a hut, from a hut I went to the projects, from the projects I went to a mansion so you out there you have ABSOLUTLY NO EXCUSE!"