April 4, 2025 By Tom Hoffman
It takes 70 volunteers to make the BC High Credit for Life Program. Thanks to the 12 Hingham parent volunteers, the CFL program is a huge success! Over 100 young men from Hingham attend BC High so it was a natural to have current student and alumni parents get involved.
First introduced in 2012, the BC High CFL is a financial literacy program for the BC High senior class that provides insight into budgeting, investing and making financial decisions.
Each member of the 257 student senior class registered and selected a profession. When they arrived at the program, they were each provided an individual budget sheet with income data, a randomly selected credit score, credit card data and student loan data. The students then visited various booths to select housing, clothing, transportation, health care and investing options.
Many of the students struggled with creating a balanced budget and learned to make tradeoffs between high priced cars and more economical vehicles. The parent volunteers acted as credit counselors meeting one on one with each student to create a balanced budget. Some of the parents were also involved in teaching job interview techniques as well as teaching about compounding and long term investing in retirement plans.
The three hour session was a great success and the seniors gave it high grades in a post program survey.
