Most 11-year-olds spend their money on things like candy bars, trendy toys or new video games.
But when Dylan Jin-Ngo of Huntington Beach was in sixth grade, he wanted to invest his money in the stock market. After his aunt gave him some Sony stock, he was hooked and determined to learn all he could about investing.
Finding information accessible to a middle-schooler was difficult. There weren’t many programs or websites tailored to younger kids who wanted to learn about stocks. The ones that did exist cost thousands of dollars, he said.
“The core problem for financial inequity in America lies a lot in the lack of financial education,” Jin-Ngo said. “It’s so crucial to equip our youth, who can take advantage of the long-term benefits of investment.”
After doing his own research, Jin-Ngo made it his goal to give younger students something he never received: a formal financial education.
Jin-Ngo became the nation’s youngest Chartered Mutual Fund Counselor – a designation given by the College for Financial Planning to expert financial advisers who pass a test, which he spent five months studying for. Though the designation was discontinued in 2020, it’s still recognized by employers and others involved in the finance industry.
Now a rising high school senior, Jin-Ngo has provided free financial educations to more than 300 Los Angeles County and Orange County middle school and high school students. His nonprofit, the Youth Investors Corp., is partnered with nine Boys & Girls Clubs throughout the two counties.
The program now offers five-week sessions featuring lectures, interactive student activities and a simulation where each student gets $100,000 in fake money to invest in different stocks.
“My high school did not have any financial education programs, unfortunately, but I wish they did,” said 17-year-old Yuliana Buelna, who took Jin-Ngo’s course through a Boys & Girls Clubs branch in Culver City. “It’s important to know how to work with your money.”
The Youth Investors Corp. teaches its students about the federal reserve, mutual funds and how the stock market works. Jin-Ngo uses everyday items such as doughnuts to explain complex topics like inflation.
What the program doesn’t do, he said, is teach specific investment strategies or tell kids what to spend their money on.
“I want to make it crystal clear that teaching investment strategies is very different than teaching about what the stock market actually is, how it operates and ways we can get involved,” Jin-Ngo said.
Getting his program started wasn’t easy, Jin-Ngo said. He reached out to more than 10 Boys & Girls Clubs locations in an attempt to share his course as widely as possible, but his cold calls and emails didn’t receive responses.
Jin-Ngo then drove to his closest Boys & Girls Clubs location to pitch his idea in person. Ryan Brenes, the branch’s unit director, said he was enthusiastic about Jin-Ngo’s idea, though he wasn’t sure the kids would share his opinion.
“I wasn’t completely sold that it was going to be able to reach all the club members, but they seemed to understand it,” Brenes said. “I don’t know if Dylan had already had it set for their level, or if he decided to make it more manageable, but it worked.”
Because Jin-Ngo uses real-world examples and includes interactive activities for students, the program was a big hit, Brenes said.
“If you’ve talked to Dylan for more than a few minutes, he doesn’t seem as young as he is. He knows what he’s doing, and he can talk to the kids,” Brenes said, adding he introduced the program to two other Boys & Girls Clubs branches in Huntington Valley.
Jin-Ngo also is using his experience teaching other youth financial literacy to help change state education policies. He is currently working with Assemblyman Randy Voepel of District 71, which encompasses parts of San Diego and Riverside counties, on new legislation to expand financial literacy among teens.
The bill he is involved with, AB 423, would introduce a pilot program in public high schools “to teach students how to save and spend their money wisely,” Voepel’s Legislative Director Adam Boman said.
After reading about the proposal online, Jin-Ngo reached out to the assemblyman’s office with suggestions, which included standardizing the program’s curriculum to ensure that all students learn the same key concepts.
Jin-Ngo hopes financial literacy will eventually become a high school graduation requirement. The current education system does not properly equip students with financial knowledge for the real world, he said.
“With the way that our education system is, the stock market has become a wealth-building tool for mainly the wealthiest Americans,” he said. “Democratizing this incredible tool, that’s what the American Dream is – creating equal opportunities for everyone.”
If approved in January, the financial literacy pilot program would be launched for the 2022-23 school year and last until 2028. The assemblyman’s office will collect feedback from participating school districts to decide whether the program should be continued, Boman said.
“This program is entirely voluntary for school districts to participate in,” Boman added. “We also have gotten a great response from the school districts in support of the current legislation.”
Though he’s only in high school, Jin-Ngo knows he wants to pursue a career that merges his two passions: finance and public policy. Though his parents don’t know much about the stock market or finance jobs, they’ve been cheering him on since his first Sony stock, he said.
“When I got it from my aunt, I had no idea what a stock even was. But then, I realized I could own a piece of one of the biggest companies in the world,” he said. “That, for me, was the most amazing thing.”
The fact that even a middle schooler could get involved in investing taught Jin-Ngo that “the stock market doesn’t discriminate.
“It didn’t matter how old you were,” he said. “And to me, it seemed like the great equalizer.”