Episode 275: The First Ever “Girls Investing Club” Growing at Herriman High

Baylee Zuniga:
We wanted to create an environment where it's okay to talk about money and it's not the stigma around money.

Elizabeth Anderson:
Our hope is we're trying to reach out to the community and find times that we can go teach other people not just at our school about investing and empowering women and giving them confidence to invest and manage their money.

Kaylee Arsenault:
Targeted towards girls but it's everybody. We want to educate everybody in money.

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. On this episode of the Supercast, meet the young women behind the first ever “Girls Investing Club” at Herriman High and hear how their investment in the club is growing in ways they never imagined.

We're here at Herriman High talking about the “Girls Investing Club”. Introduce yourselves.

Elizabeth Anderson:
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Anderson and I'm a senior.

Kaylee Arsenault:
I'm Kaylee Arsenault. I'm also a senior.

Baylee Zuniga:
I'm Baylee Zuniga and I'm a junior.

Anthony Godfrey:
So you are the legacy you’rer the pipeline for future leadership for Girls Investing Club.

Students:
Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me, how did this get started? What was the impetus for starting a Girls Investing Club?

Elizabeth Anderson:
Well, actually we're all members of DECA, an international business organization. As part of DECA, we've been able to become a part of the business program at our school and learn a lot about business and finance. While competing at actually the International DECA Competition last year, we really kind of started coming up with an idea and like a desire for an idea for this year's project, I guess, for DECA. Me and Kaylee both went to ICDC last year and we really wanted to win. And neither of us finaled. It was a little bit of a letdown and we're kind of like, you know, we have got to come up with the most banger project on the planet to crush DECA next year. As we were looking into the needs in our community that we can maybe fill with this project, we found that there's a serious lack of financial education and investing abilities for women. Women just like aren't as confident as men when it comes to investing. We really wanted to make a difference in that. We wanted to change it. We found that like 70 percent of finance professionals are men. Like that doesn't make sense, especially because we also, as we were researching for this project, we learned that women actually tend to perform better than men in finance. They just say something about the way their minds work, makes them perform better in finance in general. And in investing, they tend to get 1.3% better returns than men annually in investing. So we want to just even the playing field, make sure that women had just as much confidence as men in finance.

Anthony Godfrey:
ICDC? What competition is that?

Elizabeth Anderson:
That is the International Career Development Conference is what it stands for. And so we were there. It's like the international competition that we were competing at.

Anthony Godfrey:
And are you bringing this project back for competition this year?

Elizabeth Anderson:
Yes. That's our hope is that we take the “Girls Investing Club”, we write a paper about it, and we go present at the Utah State DECA competition and then qualify for ICDC again and take our team of three there.

Anthony Godfrey:
I like your chances.

Baylee Zuniga:
Yes. I was just going to say we also wanted to foster a community here. We wanted to create an environment where it's okay to talk about money, and it's not this stigma around money where we just don't want to talk about investment and, you know, making more money. You know, just different things like that. We wanted to just get people, especially girls, more confident in money and just in themselves as well.

Anthony Godfrey:
Love it.

Kaylee Arsenault:
Especially just because when you're in high school, yes, there's financial literacy classes and they help, but most of the time you turn 18 years old, you graduate, and you're either going to college and you don't know what to do. Like a lot of kids don't even know how to do taxes. And we want, like, and another thing is we want to help the people who don't know how to do that stuff and their parents don't know how to do that stuff either, like help them know what to do in high school so they know what they're doing for the rest of their lives.

Anthony Godfrey:
This is fantastic. How was this received once you had this concept and you put it out there?

Baylee Zuniga:
I think originally it was not a shock, but it was just people just kind of went, “oh, that's not what I've seen before in the past”.  And especially when you see a title with the club, or a club with the title “Girls Investing Club”, we got a lot of, “oh, it's for girls. You know, not for me. It's not for me, kind of like a girly club.” But it's, no, it's targeted towards girls, but it's everybody. We want to educate everybody in money. And our first social was pretty decent. We got some people there, and it was actually a really good turnout. But there was still a little bit of, what is this club? And then by the second social, people were like, this is cool. I want more of this. And so just, we're excited for our next one today.

Anthony Godfrey:
It's unique, and it's really exciting. You've had a lot of interesting speakers, I understand. Tell me some of the people that you've had come in and speak to the group.

Baylee Zuniga:
So our first speaker, her name was Anne Marie McDonald. She's one of the most successful businesswomen in Utah. She knows her stuff. And she came and talked to us about our first social. Our first social was kind of a little hectic at first, but we did a mini class, and we introduced the club.

Anthony Godfrey:
She's the one who worked with Gab.

Baylee Zuniga:
Yeah, Gab Phones, yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
She's impressive.

Baylee Zuniga:
Yeah, she's in Kaylee's ward, and so we had that connection. We've been getting speakers who connect with, who we know in our lives, who would be good at teaching. And so we just get speakers like that, that we know would teach good at the clubs.

Anthony Godfrey:
This is so cool. So, what are some of the things that you have learned through DECA? First of all, I know the DECA program at Herriman is very strong. It's so cool that the Herriman DECA program creates other programs that are offshoots of the DECA program, like the “Girls Investing Club”. So tell me, what are some of the things through DECA and the “Girls Investing Club” that you have learned about finance, about money that you didn't know before that you think can impact your life long term?

Elizabeth Anderson:
There's so much. Honestly, before high school, I never, ever, like I told my whole family, like I would not do business. Even though the rest of my family like did business, I'm like, this is so not my thing. I got involved in DECA, and all of a sudden, I like, because I didn't think I would do anything business related, I hadn't learned anything about finance or investing. But I got involved in DECA and realized that it's actually super duper interesting. And honestly, I think that's something that we're also trying to teach our girls with the “Girls Investing Club” is that it is interesting. But then, junior year, once I had already kind of fallen in love with business, I took a finance 1050 class with Mr. Kammerman, and I was able to learn what investing is, that there are different types. But previously, I legit only knew about stocks. Like I, investing is the stock market. That was kind of my mindset. And then I realized in finance 1050, I learned about that. I learned about real estate. I learned about taxes and just all sorts of money stuff. And I found it very interesting, but it also kind of scared me in a way, because I realized that I didn't know anything about finance before, and I wanted to learn more. So...

Anthony Godfrey:
When you're entering a field that you're not familiar with, those are kind of the phases that you go through. I'm interested. I'm learning a lot. I'm terrified at how much I still don't know.

Elizabeth Anderson:
Yes. And so this club is definitely a way to continue what I learned in Finance 1050, and to pursue the love for business and finance that I found in DECA.

Anthony Godfrey:
I watched this TikTok account, this investing TikTok account, from a guy who retired and used to… And it's fascinating. Even in 60 seconds, he tells me stuff that I've been researching, looking into. So there's a lot to explore. And anyway, I'm always blown away by the new acronyms that I learned from others. It's so exciting to hear the three of you talk about finance this way. Anyone who thinks that high school is a narrow experience these days, it is not. And you have broadened the high school experience, not just for yourselves, but for a lot of other students. And I think this goes well beyond finance as I talk with you. It has to do with confidence and saying, "Hey, you know what? There's a broader world out there that if I understand it better, I'm going to make a better life for myself and my family."

Stay with us when we come back more with the students behind the “Girls Investing Club”.

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Anthony Godfrey:
We've talked about a lot of different ways to invest, but let's talk about stocks. Does everyone have a stock tip for the people listening?

Elizabeth Anderson:
Honestly, what we've been telling our girls in the club is not that there's a specific go-to stock, but think about the things that you already like in life. Think about what brand you're wearing, what brand of stuff you just used, and then research that because I think investing can be a lot more fun and interesting if you choose investments that you already are involved with the company in some way. Our teacher, Mr. Kammerman, has a nice rundown of how the stock market is doing on this TV of his in his classroom every day.

Anthony Godfrey:
This is like the big TV on The Today Show, showing all of the politics and the percentage of blue states and red states.

Elizabeth Anderson:
This is another thing that we can turn to know what to invest in. We can look at the trends of the different businesses that we're interested in, look at choose a business we like and then see how it's doing on this board and research to ourselves. I don't know, there's not really one go-to stock. The stock market changes so much.

Baylee Zuniga:
Yeah, I would add to that and just say since it's so unpredictable and stuff can happen, you never know, it's just important to diversify and like maybe don't invest everything in the stock market. Do some real estate and maybe even some CDs, you know, just different things like that where you're not, you know, totally screwed over if the stock market crashes.

Kaylee Arsenault:
I would say always have a backup plan. Like don't invest all your money in one company that may or may not do good. And you also always want to research, research, research, research before you put your money into anything. And so if you put your money into a company that becomes a liability, and goes downhill, you're losing money yourself. And so that's my tip.

Anthony Godfrey:
Investing involves inherent risk. Results may vary on individual accounts. You know, I'm really excited to hear that you are doing this now. There's the old saying, "When's the best time to plant a tree?" 20 years ago. "When's the second best time to plant a tree?" Right now. But you are doing it as a student in high school. You're looking at investing. What advice do you have for others and what are you focused on yourself at this stage of your life?

Baylee Zuniga:
I honestly think parents need to teach their kids more about it early on, at an early-on age, because I started learning about money and stuff at the age of 10 and managing my money and splitting it up. We split it up in four categories. Spend, give, invest, and save. And so, super simple for kids to learn how to do that. I just think it's kind of a stereotype. "No, I want my kid not to worry about the money aspect of life." "I want them to stay innocent. They can get a job when they're 16. But I don't want them to worry about that stuff." You're setting your kid up for failure. Not for failure, but just like you want your kid to be prepared in life.

Anthony Godfrey:
So your advice is start now. Start now, personally. Start now with your kids. Just make sure that you engage, because there's a lot to be learned and a lot to be gained.

Elizabeth Anderson:
And I think it's also important that you not only start learning about it now, but you start practicing investing. One thing that I didn't really fully realize until I started doing this club is that you really don't have to actually be 18 to invest. As Baylee mentioned, you get your parents involved. You can always go buy a CD that your parents also sign their name on so that you can start investing when you're younger. So I think that's a great way to practice. But also, we practice in our club each week. We have what's called a "MarketWatch game" where it's this simulation that follows the actual stock market. So you're given fake money that you can invest in real stocks that will follow the trends of the stock market. And you can see how things kind of work with that. And so I think along with learning, starting now learning, start practicing now as well. That's kind of what we're trying to do with girls investing, is we want people to know what stocks are and know how to use them, not just know that they exist.

Kaylee Arsenault:
Yeah, one thing I'm going to do specifically, I think, is today we're actually learning about mutual funds. And the person teaching it was kind of giving us a rundown of it. And she was telling us that if you spend like $200 on AirPods now, it's $200 AirPods, whatever. But if you invest in any mutual fund, it can grow to like $36,000 by the time you retire. And that's just by $200 now. So it's just by spending money in a place where I will have much more of it when I retire versus on a pair of AirPods, I want to invest in my future. And I want to be able to not necessarily like delay gratification almost, not instant. And just kind of be responsible.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, it's a great perspective. It makes those AirPods seem pretty expensive.

Kaylee Arsenault:
Yeah, it does.

Anthony Godfrey:
What else do you have planned for the year? What's coming up?

Elizabeth Anderson:
Other things we have going on this year, we are going to continue having our club meetings and trying to get good speakers and incentives for people to come. We actually had Crumbl Cookies sponsor part of our meeting last time they gave us free cookies for the girls, which is really fun. So we look forward to trying to partner with more businesses in the future. We're also working with Pura Vida bracelets through Give Me Beauty. And they are donating bracelets that say “Girls Investing” for our club so that we can really unify. So we can really unify people and make it like a community, not just an event in a club. But then beyond that, we're really trying to take our club past just club meetings. The way that we hope to do this is by going to middle schools and other schools in the area, as well as by going to things like the YWCA and places in our community. Our hope is we're trying to reach out to the community and find times that we can go teach other people, not just at our school, about investing and empowering women and giving them confidence to invest and manage their money.

Anthony Godfrey:
I love the way that you are connecting with students, thinking about middle schools, connecting to businesses in the broader community, and bringing those individuals in that can really inspire. There's nothing like seeing someone who's had success so you can set your goals and aspire to that and say, "You know what? This is really something I can do." Thank you so much. Thank you for doing this. I'm so impressed. And I'm excited to watch where this goes. Thank you for spending the time today. We'll let you get to this event today that you have.

Students:
Sounds good. Thank you so much.

Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for investing your time listening to another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you will do today. We'll see you out there.