Each year, the Utah Jump$tart Coalition, the Utah Office of State Treasurer, and the Utah State Board of Education recognize four teachers and one administrator who exemplify excellence in empowering Utah’s youth with financial knowledge and skills. Itineris Early College High School Director of Students and Facilities Jeff Bossard was awarded the 2024 Utah Financial Literacy Hall of Fame’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his pioneering efforts in the field of financial

literacy education.

His method is on the money

Bossard had already been teaching financial literacy classes at Itineris Early College High School for four years when Utah became the first state to make it a requirement for high school graduation
in 2008.

Bossard’s program, which prepares students to make adult financial decisions, is based on the best teacher of all—
experience.

“From the state level, they tell you what to teach, but they don’t tell you how to do it, and so I tell stories,” Bossard said. “I tell them the very first day of class, ‘I’m going to teach you the good things I’ve done financially, and I’m going to tell you the mistakes I’ve made, so that you hopefully don’t repeat what I’ve done.’”

Jessica Jorgensen, who is co-teaching the class this year in preparation for taking over, said Bossard’s personal storytelling is an especially effective teaching method.

“He uses his life experiences, good or bad, to help teach students about being financially literate,” she said. “By being able to introduce topics in this way, it is easier for students to see the value in what they are learning; this helps them stay more
engaged.”

Common “cents” lessons

The financial literacy class covers topics such as buying a house or a car, consumer credit scores, interest rates and taxes. Bossard’s students learn why they should care about those topics and how they can prepare to make the best financial decisions by imagining the life they want to have in the future.

Then they try to achieve it in a financial simulation, in which they get a job and then live within their salary to purchase a car and a house, deal with surprise repairs,  pay taxes and bills, all while saving
for retirement.

“Jeff feels super strongly about having the class laid out in this way because it is so helpful in helping students envision what they need to do to have the future they want,” Jorgensen said.

Students track current interest rates, salaries, grocery prices and real estate
values.

“Putting the numbers in front of students definitely gets their attention, because even if they don’t understand all the concepts, when they see the numbers change either up or down, that clicks,” Bossard said. “It’s a fun class to teach because kids like to learn about money, and the more practical, more realistic, more real life that it can be, the better it is for them—and it also makes it more fun.”

Banking on remembering

Bossard acknowledges that many students won’t buy a house for another 10 years, but he has had a few buy a house within a few years of taking his class. He began investing in real estate at a young age and has purchased and sold $3 million worth of real estate in his lifetime. His personal stories about his experiences get students thinking about how they would respond to those scenarios, and he hopes they’ll remember his stories when they finally face these financial decisions in their own lives.

“Financial literacy is one of these classes where you really do plant a seed,” he said. “And for some kids, it grows faster than for others. Other kids, it’s just in the back of their mind, and all of a sudden they go to buy a car, and they’re like, ‘Oh, wow, this is going to put me really far in debt.’ So telling stories, that’s the stuff that sinks in.”

IECHS Administrator Rabecca Cisneros likes that Bossard walks students through real life situations which give them the tools and confidence they need to make their own financial decisions.

 “He makes them actually think through real world problems and come up with solutions, so that when they are standing in the grocery store and they only have $3, then they think back to ‘Oh yeah, I remember when Mr. Bossard told me about this,’ and they think what are their choices,” Cisneros said. “So he makes that very meaningful and personal to them in a way that makes sense.”

In addition to stories, hands-on activities and games, Bossard also partners with Cyprus Credit Union, which provides guest speakers and workshops.

Addressing the other side of the coin

This month, CCU helped sponsor a parent financial literacy night for the students’ parents.

“What brought this on is having students say, ‘My parents need to learn this stuff!’” Bossard said. “As an example. I had a kid recently, when we were talking about how to buy a used car, and he was telling the story that his mom went to buy a used car and totally got ripped off because she just didn’t know. And he’s like, ‘Man, I wish we’d had this lesson three weeks ago so I could have taught her.’”

Cisneros said parents, most of whom never had a financial literacy class, tend to have the biggest influence on their children’s financial decisions.

“I think too many times the kids are at the mercy of just knowing what their parents know, and so they just follow in their parents’ financial footsteps, which sometimes is good and sometimes is really bad,” Cisneros said.

Earning dividends on his investment

Bossard’s class has influenced the success of many students’ lives, Cisneros said.

“The number of kids who said that was the best class, that was the most meaningful class, that’s the class that I’m going to use the most—that just came over and over again,” she said. “The thing that Mr. Bossard does really, really well is making the kids be engaged with the material, and he’s done it for so many years in different schools, off and on, that I think he’s actually changing the trajectory of lives for kids of all levels and abilities.”

There are many success stories of students who have applied the lessons they learned in Bossard’s class.

“Recently I had a former student come back and say ‘Thank you, because you convinced me way-back-when I needed to put money in a 401K, and I’m now 34 years old and I’ve got $250,000 in a 401K,” Bossard said. “I hugged him. I was like, ‘It’s so nice to know that you guys actually listen to what I tell you.’”

One of last year’s students started his own company.

“He felt really empowered to be able to transition into adulthood and he felt like he had an understanding of money and what it could do,” Cisneros said. “He opened his own LLC in his senior year of high school and met with a tax adviser and went down and put it into practice.”

Cashing in his chips

Bossard will be retiring in April, after 31 years of teaching, to work on building his dream home. He has been mentoring Jorgensen to take over his program. λ