Money Smart Week began as a coordinated effort of the Money Smart Advisory Council, a diverse group of more than 40 Chicago-area organizations working together to promote personal financial literacy. Michael Moskow, who was Chicago Fed president at that time, convened the Council's first meeting in July 2001, during which members agreed to share resources and ideas to achieve greater public awareness of the programs and services available in the city of Chicago. The result was Money Smart Week 2002 — six days of focused presentations by community groups, financial institutions, government agencies, educational organizations, and financial experts, all designed to help consumers learn to better manage their personal finances. The effort would showcase different programs, help consumers get information, bring together different organizations — many for the first time — and help these organizations share expertise and leverage limited resources. Today, Money Smart Week is much broader in scope and continues to expand, creating new partnerships, heightened exposure, and substantive events. The Money Smart Week model has grown beyond Chicago with successful campaigns taking place in states such Indiana, Michigan, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin) and new cities joining every year.

http://www.chicagofed.org/webpages/education/msw/history.cfm

Title: Money Money Honey Bunny Topic: Money Smarts for Children Audience: Preschool & Parents

"Promotional materials were absolutely wonderful. I used all of the bookmarks in various different ways; one set had a bibliography of adult references while another one was used for coin rubbing. I glued one each; a pennie, nickel, dime and quarter to the back of a bookmark and introduced the concept of value in story time. With the aid of parents, the children made coin rubbings and I allowed them to keep those bookmarks. I copied other bookmarks as designed by you and let the children "shop for books and other materials" in our library. I provided shopping carts, cash registers, and empty grocery boxes for the activity. It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful and I received raves on the program."

-- Sandra Cooke, Sherrills Ford Branch Library, North Carolina

Photos by Naperville Public Library

Money Smart for Children:

Dollars & Sense Reality FairPhotos by Naperville Public Library

Title: It's Money BabyTopic: Teen Financial PlanningAudience: Age 15-18

Title: Budgeting 101Topic: The Basics of Budgeting

Audience: Teens & Adults

“Displays were featured in the children's, teen, and adult sections of our library highlighting books, DVDs, and other resources available in-house or on the web.”

Karen Hopkins, Converse County Library, Wyoming

Photos by North Dakota State University

Title: Basics of Investing

Topic: Investing/Stock Market

Audience: Adults

Title: You Earned It, Now Protect It! Preventing Financial Fraud

Topic: Fraud

Audience: Adults

“We are just getting started in implementing our "Smart investing @ your

library“ grant from the FINRA Foundation. Participating in Money Smart Week

will be a big part of the program next year when our programming schedule is

completely organized. Since we got such a late start this year I am pleased

that we were able to have one program.”

Barbara Roberts, Pelham Public Library, Alabama

Photos by Greenwood County Library

Title: Estate Planning

Topic: Estate Planning

Audience: Seniors

Title: Social Security Retirement Info. Session

Topic : Social Security Retirement

Audience : Seniors

“For the first year, I think attendance was pretty good. We did get a lot of great

feedback and I think the community would respond well to this being a yearly

thing. I believe attendance would increase each year. It was a good opportunity

to promote library resources related to each topic. I made some good

partnerships with people in the community who came to speak, and will use

those in the future not just for Money Smart purposes.”

Katie Head, Greenwood County Library, South Carolina

Photos by Greenwood County Library

April 21-28, 2012