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BY WARREN BOROSON
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
BOROSON ON MONEY
A 17-year-old student was forced to declare bankruptcy because of massive credit-card debt.
A young woman was crying because she had only 50 cents on her, not enough to get her home from work. She didn't know how to cash her first salary check, which she had been holding onto for 10 days.
And then there was the young man who was enraged because some crook-"FICA"-was stealing money from his salary check. (FICA, of course, is the Social Security system.)
Such evidence that young people know pitifully little about personal finance led New York's Banking Commissioner, years ago, to vow to do something about it. "And I never said that about anything else," she says today. She was horrified that "these youngsters were finished before they started."
That woman, Muriel Siebert, has been keeping her vow. (Yes, the same woman who runs the big brokerage firm.) A financial curriculum she launched, via the Muriel F. Siebert Foundation, is now being offered in 109 New York high schools, and in September of next year it will be offered in New Jersey. To graduate, high school students will have to take a half-year of economic and financial classes. Some 500 New Jersey teachers have been trained to lead the classes. Other school systems around the country are also studying the program.
Trying to persuade school systems to teach personal finance has been no picnic. Siebert, who is 77, has talked to groups around the country, to teachers, to boards of education.
When she first broached the idea with New York educators ten years ago, the response was distinctly unenthusiastic. One education commissioner dismissingly told Siebert, we already teach that stuff. He asked his assistant to confirm it. The assistant checked, then said, "She's right. We don't teach it."
Siebert's ground-breaking curriculum is called the Siebert Personal Finance Program: Taking Control of Your Financial Future. It's even been adapted for middle-school students and for adults.
A few months ago, Siebert (everyone calls her "Mickie") was given a special honor: The New Jersey Coalition for Financial Education named her as the first person to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award for promoting financial literacy. In fact, the award itself has been named for her. (The Coalition consists of around 100 representatives of schools, government agencies, businesses, and other nonprofit organizations that provide financial services.)
The event honoring Siebert was held in collaboration with the New Jersey Department of Education, Rutgers University, and its New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station Office of Continuing Professional Education and T.E.E.M. Gateway and the Matheny School.
***
Siebert has led a busy life, chockfull of all sorts of accomplishments. It's partly due to her drive: She doesn't get discouraged easily. And due to her smarts: She can look at a balance sheet, an annual report, earnings statements, and such and actually make sense of them. It also hasn't interfered with her career that she's easy to get along with. And honest.
Q. Can you explain why Bernie Madoff did what he did?
Siebert: No. I cannot explain it.
She's creative, too. Years ago, when she was a young stockbroker, a gentleman took her out to lunch-and treated her to a flood of anti-Semitic remarks. She held her tongue.
What would you have done?
This is what Siebert did: When she returned to her office, she dropped that fellow a note:
Roses are reddish
Violets are blueish
You may not know it
But I'm Jewish.
***
The daughter of a dentist, Siebert was born in 1932 in Cleveland and began attending Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve), but had to drop out in1949 because her father became ill and the family finances were shaky. (She still doesn't have a college degree, but she has 18 honorary doctorates.)
In 1967, to start her own brokerage firm, she asked ten different men to sponsor her. Nine turned her down. But she persevered, and today remains the only woman to head a firm on the New York Stock Exchange. Her firm was also the first discount broker. And she was the first woman appointed superintendent of banks in New York. And she belongs to virtually every gilt-edged organization in the New York area.
***
Her office is in the so-called Lipstick building on 54th Street and the East Side. When she rented the place, she was told: no pets. Not even a goldfish.
Now, Siebert happened to be very much attached to a pet Chihuahua she owned.
And when it came to the closing, she refused to sign the lease. "No leash, no lease," she said memorably. She got her way.
She carried the dog, Monster, in and out of the building. And it was confined to her office-it didn't wander at large.
After a year, the building's manager came to her and asked how she liked her offices. Did she want more room? She was quite satisfied, she said. She herself asked: Had anyone complained about Monster? Nope.
Same thing happened the second year. Any complaints about the dog? Nope.
But during the third year, there was something new. The manager said that other tenants now wanted to bring pets to their offices....
Alas, Monster became seriously ill-she was 17-and Siebert had to put her to sleep. Siebert went two months without a pet. "I was heart-broken," she says. So she sent out a distress call to pet stores and breeders around the country. The building manager might not permit a new dog. So, did anyone have a dog that looked like Monster? She found a lookalike in Florida. Monster 2. And she didn't tell the manager that her dog was now an impostor.
Anyway, guess who was renting the two floors above Siebert's floor. None other than the master swindler himself, the unspeakable Bernie Madoff. And when his fraud came to light, an angry crowd gathered outside the building. The building itself was filled with roving FBI agents and SEC agents. An atmosphere of fear permeated the offices.
To ensure Siebert's safety, the manager made sure that she was accompanied whenever she left her office. And he saw to it that a cab picked her up in the morning and took her home at night.
After several weeks had gone by, the manager came to visit Siebert in order to convey his abject apologies for everything she had been forced to endure-the FBI agents, the SEC agents, the tightened security.
Siebert just smiled. And she finally broke the news.
"Meet Monster 2."
***
Having skimmed through it, I would give the Muriel F. Siebert Foundation's Personal Finance Program an A+. Easy to understand, varied, useful as heck, and lots of fun.
Here something from p. 27:
Ask students...
Why are there no longer icemen who go door to door delivering large chunks of ice?
What has happened to the makers of phonograph recordings since the advent of CDs and MP3 players?
How long do you think there will be a need for VCR repairpersons?
What is happening to mom-and-pop video rental stores?
Is there a future in fax machine repair?
And on page 153 there's investment advice (most of it bad) possibly heard from family members:
- Buy stocks low and sell stocks when the price is high.
- Only invest in companies with products or services you use.
- Buy only "blue chip" stocks
- Avoid technology stocks.
- Keep out-the stock market crashed in 1929, and it can do it again.
Warren Boroson will answer financial questions sent to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
