Rutgers Business School, Newark and New Brunswick Finance Professor James Bicksler recently invited five finance industry professionals to his MBA summer course for a brief, yet intense discussion about financial literary. Bicksler, who teaches Financial Analysis & Management, regularly invites financial experts into his classroom to remind students of the greater professional context surrounding their studies. This August, over 30 Rutgers MBA students attended this latest session in an effort to become more financially literate.
The five finance and money management professionals included: Dr. Douglas Love, chief investment officer at Stronghold Group, Walter Lenhard, a senior investment strategist with Vanguard Quantitative Equity Group, Francis Ng, a senior consultant with Bloomberg Inc., Jeremy Gold, an independent consulting actuary, and Michael Jaffe, an attorney with Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP. They spoke to the Rutgers MBA students about everyday good money sense and long-term investment strategies. MBA students were encouraged to live within their means in order to achieve financial freedom, use debit rather than credit cards, buy insurance in preparation for retirement, and invest in annuities as opposed to stocks.
Since the economic recession and the accompanying increase in personal bankruptcies, educators across disciplines have integrated tenets of financial literacy into their curriculum. Even Rutgers MBA students, well-versed in the latest research on financial management, found that they had something to learn from the visiting industry experts whose “spend carefully, spend wisely” message holds enormous value in an economically volatile time.
