Answering Chicago’s “Questions to Pose”
This post was originally written in March of 2022. It was updated in September 2024.
The University of Chicago has produced a list of 17 “Questions to Pose” that parents and community members can use to determine whether a financial education program in their school is unbiased and high-quality. We answered all of them, demonstrating that Gifting Sense is an unbiased, high-quality early financial education program. If you would like to discuss any of our answers, please reach out via the Contact Us form.
1) What specific financial education program is my student using in school? Gifting Sense is a mission-driven provider of workshops and tools (available at no cost) designed to allow children to experience first-hand how and why thinking before buying is a powerful and rewarding life skill.
2a) Who is the author or creator of the materials? Karen Holland, an economic analyst and parent. Karen has a Master’s Degree in Economic History from the University of Toronto and an Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She has been recognized as a Distinguished Educator by the national nonprofit Next Gen Personal Finance (ngpf.org) for outstanding commitment to professional development in real-world personal finance topics. She worked as an Analyst (in Human Resources, Sovereign Risk, Financial Institutions, and Corporate Treasury) for the Royal Bank of Canada before having a family. Her unwavering commitment to creating a future where young adults avoid financial pitfalls because they developed productive money habits when they were young has been the driving force behind Gifting Sense for a decade.
2b) Is there a potential conflict of interest? No. Gifting Sense operates without any sponsorship or third-party support. The project has been bootstrapped since its inception, so there are no conflicts of interest.
3) Is there advertising or branding from financial institutions or products on the materials? None.
4) Are there incentives for students and/or teachers to use the program? If so, how might those incentives influence students’ learning? The incentive is that the approach engages both teachers in delivering and students in consuming early personal finance lessons. Educators know that purpose-led learning works best. Calculating the DIMS-DOES IT MAKE SENSE SCORE?® for a possible purchase allows young people to work on a problem that matters to them in real-time in class: “Should I buy this item or experience?” Once students discover that they can get and use (at first basic) financial information to improve their lives, they want to acquire more financial information. In this way, our workshops prime the demand pump for the subsequent personal finance lessons available in high school and beyond.
Today’s children are digital payment system natives, who can find themselves making some very fast and seemingly painless shopping decisions. There is nothing wrong with digital payment methods or online shopping, both can be super efficient and helpful. But today’s parents learned that money was scarce, and that spending came with built-in trade-offs, largely as a result of the physical and visual cues that using cash provided. When your pockets were empty, you couldn’t buy anymore.
Calculating the DIMS-DOES IT MAKE SENSE?® SCORE takes all of three minutes. It’s just a little “speed bump”; slowing down the pace at which modern kids shop. It re-inserts some of the “pause before purchase” time that spending cash naturally provided to their parents. Just like when driving, speed bumps don’t prevent anyone from getting anywhere they really want to go, they just help them get there safely.
Despite more ways to learn about personal finance today than ever before, many citizens still struggle with creating personal financial peace of mind. Financial literacy remains elusive because most personal finance education reaches citizens well into adulthood. However, the habits and beliefs about money that inform how we think and act with it for the rest of our lives are primarily established by adolescence. So, to avoid typical financial pitfalls, people need to learn how to be “good with money” while still in school.
5) Do the materials encourage the use of a particular financial institution’s or company’s product(s)? No.
6) What data is being collected by the materials? When is it purged? How is it stored? We collect no personal information. We have every completed digital worksheet, so we know what DIMS SCOREs have been calculated for (a lot of SmartPhones, running shoes, professional sporting events, and concert tickets) but not by who or if a purchase was ever made.
7) What is done with student data collected by the materials? No student data is collected. There is no registration or paywall requirement to use the DIMS SCORE® calculator. We are a mission-driven organization. We are Social entrepreneurs.
8a) What are the goals of the materials? The program and tools we employ are designed to allow children to experience first-hand how easy it is to get and use (at first basic) financial information to make their lives better. And they are designed to give young people this first-hand experience when their money personality is still being developed. The timing is key because the unconscious habits and beliefs we develop about money between the ages of 3 and 14 are incredibly stable, informing how we think and act with money for the rest of our lives. Having a positive money-management experience before the end of middle school really matters!
8b) What problem(s) do the materials aim to solve? We are solving the problem of a lack of step-by-step instruction on how to spend wisely, which feels immediately helpful to youth when their money personalities are being developed.
Despite more ways to learn about personal finance today than ever before, many citizens still struggle with creating personal financial peace of mind. Financial literacy remains elusive because most personal finance education reaches citizens well into adulthood. However, the habits and beliefs about money that inform how we think and act with it for the rest of our lives are primarily established by adolescence. So, to avoid typical financial pitfalls, people need to learn how to be “good with money” while still in school.
Instead of having to work to uncover and then perhaps re-engineer less-than-productive money habits as adults, why not create circumstances under which children can develop productive money habits in the first place?
9) What are the priorities of the program?
- Encourage youth to spend with less speed and more thought.
- Allow youth to experience first-hand that thinking before buying (TBB) does NOT mean that you never get to do or buy anything fun, only that you spend with a plan. That plan involves understanding the full cost of a purchase and how much you can use or appreciate what you buy before you buy it.
- This helps children understand that being financially responsible is about more than just “saving money.” TBB lets us avoid disappointment, reduce waste, improve family harmony and financial well-being, and give us all an immediate way to protect the planet.
- This gives school-aged children an age-appropriate perspective on how they can live the life they want without spending more than they make before they become adult income earners. Again, the timing is key. We’re giving kids good basic spending habits before the consequences of poor spending habits can land them in an early financial pitfall.
10) Do the materials address the roles of financial institutions in the financial system? Only in that financial institutions provide the majority of digital payment methods. With older workshop participants, there can be a discussion about how credit scores are built and used, but 98% of the time, we focus on the importance of taking a quick pause before making a purchase. It doesn’t matter if you are going to pay for a potential purchase with cash, a gift card, a debit card, a credit card, ApplePay, Venmo, or Interac…we hope children will pause and calculate the DIMS-DOES IT MAKE SENSE?® SCORE before they spend a dime.
11) Does the program provide information that serves the interests of financial institutions or companies, or does the information serve a different purpose? The program only serves students, their families, and schools.
12a) How do participants benefit from the messages in the materials? Workshop participants learn that it isn’t hard to ask and answer basic questions about typical childhood purchases but that it can be very rewarding. In other words, they learn about the power and importance of financial defense (spending with a plan). Most kids today dream of vocations that come with high incomes because they feel that financial offense (earning) matters more than financial defense. However, every citizen needs both financial offense and financial defense to create personal financial peace of mind.
Investing is the most popular topic in personal finance but ranks behind basic money management in importance. Why? You have to be able to afford to invest! Wise spending habits are the surest route to being able to create an investable surplus as an adult income earner. Investable surpluses don’t have to be big but have to exist.
12b) How might participants change their behavior as a result of the program? Being good with money is a pursued interest. When do humans typically decide to pursue a skill? When they can observe or experience it and think to themselves, “That looks like fun” or “That looks helpful.” We help children experience how easy it is to get and use (at first basic) financial information to make their lives better. And because we give them this experience when their money personalities are still in development, they’re able to enter young adulthood confident about their ability to seek out the more sophisticated financial information they’ll need later in life when it is relevant and can be helpful. Simply put, early financial education solves so much.
12c) To what extent does this behavior change benefit the vendor? The only way the program benefits Gifting Sense is that it helps us deliver the difference we want to make. What’s the adage? “Be the change you want to see.”
13a) What are the advertised benefits of the program? The advertised benefits of the program are that it brings financial literacy to life for children in a way that is relevant to their young lives and so much more helpful to developing productive money habits than say a lesson on mortgages – twenty years before you need one. The knowledge children acquire in our workshops is fundamental, but because it is centered around helping them assess, compare, and categorize purchase(s) they’re already thinking about, it helps them avoid disappointment in real-time. Engaging lessons stick and cannot help but inform future financial decisions!
13b) Have these been proven? We are happy to share the feedback we have received from parents, educators, and perhaps most importantly, kids over the years. Reach out via the Contact Us form, and we’ll send you the Explainer Deck we share with educators when we schedule workshops. Please also see the testimonials and press page to further assess if our claims have been substantiated. We have offered to participate in several third-party assessments. To date, no one has taken us up on it.
14) Have the materials been evaluated by an independent reviewer? We have been a Runner-Up to large household names at the 2022, 2023, and 2024 Money Awareness & Inclusion Awards. (Specifically, we were the Runner-Up to UChicago’s finEdge program in the category of Best School-Aged Non-Profit Financial Education Program in 2022. We were the Runner-Up to the UK “Green Your Pension” initiative Make My Money Matter for the Sim Kee Boon Prize in Sustainable Finance Literacy in 2023. We were the Runner-Up to The Financial Times FLIC (Financial Literacy Inclusion Campaign) in the category of Best School-aged Non-Profit Financial Education Program in 2024.) In addition, parents, educators, personal finance authors, and experts regularly speak about how our platform and tools help children and families. Perhaps most importantly, kids tell us all the time, “…you explained that so well…” or “…I just never thought of it that way…”. Our advertising is “word of mouth”.
We have given workshops (via Zoom since the Spring of 2020) across Canada and the United States, as well as in Argentina, Mexico, Korea, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Sweden! The list grows every week. Workshops are typically delivered in schools or community centers, but also recently through Outschool, where we have been able to work with home-schooled learners.
15) Have the materials been found to be objective? Yes. Take the DIMS-DOES IT MAKE SENSE?® SCORE Calculator for a test drive, and see for yourself.
16) Do the materials only provide partial information? The materials fully meet the goals of the program. We do one thing well. Our focus is on wise spending but in the following context: Personal finances are no different than team sports; to “win,” you have to be both offensive (earn) and defensive (spend wisely). Most adults know they should spend less than they make (and ideally invest the surplus for their future). The struggle is how? How can we live the life we want and spend in a way that allows us to create an investable surplus at almost any income level? We can start by becoming more thoughtful consumers because two-thirds of citizens around the world make purchases they never fully use or appreciate.
Who among us wasn’t ever asked as a child what they might like to receive for an upcoming birthday or holiday gift, how best to spend “back-to-school” dollars, or even just what to have for dinner? Let’s not waste these natural opportunities to give kids thoughtful spending habits. Investing is the most popular topic in personal finance but ranks behind basic money management in importance. You have to be able to afford to invest.
17) Do the materials deemphasize information that will help students think critically about certain financial institutions, companies, or products? The opposite! Our workshops, tools, and process show how easy and important it is to quickly, but not arbitrarily, assess a possible purchase in time to ensure it makes sense for the buyer and their family.
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