The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Firm offers millennials financial literacy lessons
The Barnum Financial Group is looking to get young professionals up to speed on managing their finances.
The Shelton-based company launch its newest financial literacy facility, The Establishment Barnum, on Tuesday at 100 Commerce Drive as a new approach to educating millennials about budgeting, managing debt and more.
“They are not learning that on (a college) campus, and this whole literacy thing is so important to them getting off to a good start,” said CEO and founder Paul Blanco.
Barnum Financial Group provides financial education in the workplace at hundreds of companies and nonprofits in New England, New Jersey, and New York. According to Blanco the venue is meant to offer a welcoming learning atmosphere for attendees.
Deviating from the corporate setting, the Establishment is set up to look like a restaurant where attendees can take one of several free courses taught by a licensed financial adviser from Barnum Financial Group.
“We wanted more of a collegiate, relaxed atmosphere that we could do this,” Blanco said. “We are trying to make it this fun concept where we know that millennials today don’t have a lot of places to learn and we thought that having more of a setting like that was a very relaxed and informal space.”
Sessions are slated to accommodate between 15 and 25 attendees and will be led by trained and licensed advisers from Barnum’s Shelton and Stamford offices. The presentations will be educational only and free of charge, according to a news release from the Shelton company.
There will also be courses held at company locations.
The venue will offer 11 courses, including Buying Your First Home, Creating a Budget, Females and Finance, The Young Professionals Guide to Financial Planning, Making Sense of Student Loans, The Bigger Picture of Credit Scores, and Wine and Investing, among others.
Barnum Financial Group has been providing financial literacy seminars to companies and nonprofits since the 2000s through its Corporate Education program.
Blanco said a lot of the courses have focused more on baby boomers and employees nearing retirement.
“We’ve had a lot of success doing that and we knew the topics, so we started thinking what are some of the topics that apply to (millennials),” he said. “We are going to continue to spread this out to more generations because we believe that it’s a huge problem. (People) come out of college or high school, and if their parents don’t have an adviser or someone, they don’t know where to turn.”