FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 14, 2008CENTRAL COAST — Before heading off to college with shiny new credit cards and checkbooks in hand, hundreds of local teens are mastering the fine art of handling their own finances.
For the past five years, nearly 4,000 local high school students have participated in the High School Financial Planning Program sponsored by CoastHills Federal Credit Union and taught by a dozen CoastHills branch managers.
This year, the program reaches students in high schools from Paso Robles to Lompoc. CoastHills hopes to expand the program to every high school on the Central Coast.
The CoastHills volunteer instructors teach the innovative finance program through creative classroom activities and exercises that students will find useful throughout their lives. They're about to wrap up the seven-unit course, and when they are through, their classes will have learned about budgeting and investing their money, managing a checkbook and how to use credit wisely, among other valuable skills.
"All of our branch managers take part, and they're doing a great job educating our young people," said Coast Hills President/CEO Jeff York.
CoastHills currently serves more than 64,000 members in Northern Santa Barbara County and San Luis Obispo County with 13 branches and a full-service call center. With assets of more than $600 million, CoastHills is one of the largest independently owned financial institutions on the Central Coast.