The Importance of Financial Literacy

At Severn Savings Bank, we believe it is important to help our local schools, senior centers, and organizations by providing financial education through on-site programs and presentations. Year after year, we volunteer countless hours to provide credit counseling and financial literacy training to people of all ages. The last couple years, we have partnered with His Hope Ministries, a local homeless shelter in Denton, Maryland to teach a six-week course on financial literacy. This partnership, along with our involvement in other organizations, has inspired us to launch Money Management 101. This online program makes the financial information that we review with many organizations accessible to everyone - to help us all make wiser financial decisions!

Check out this brief video about our involvement with His Hope Ministries and our inspiration for the program:


Program Overview

Below is an outline of our program.  You can simply read a few sections that you’d like to learn more about, or you can review the entire program.  Either way, we’re confident that this information will help you:

  • Make financial decisions with more confidence
  • Understand how to establish or improve your credit
  • Differentiate between wants and needs
  • Establish a budget
  • Prevent identity theft and avoid online scams
  • Stress less and achieve more, ultimately improving your quality of life
 

1:  Bank Account Basics 

  • What is needed to open an account
  • Types of Accounts
  • How to Write a Check
  • Using Debit Cards
  • Overdraft services

2:  Career Development 

  • Resume Building
  • Interview Tips
  • Follow-up

3:  Budgeting 

  • Developing a budget
  • Determining wants v. needs
  • Emergency savings plan
  • Setting Goals

4:  Establishing and Managing Credit 

  • Your credit history & score – what does it mean, what does it affect?
  • How to establish and maintain good credit
  • How to correct errors on your credit report

5:  Protecting Yourself from Fraud & Scams 

  • Identity theft – what to know & how to respond
  • Fraud schemes & scams
  • Current alerts, trends on scams - FTC