The new fad these days among parents trying to make their children even more savvy is sending them to finance camp, where they are learning slick little phrases like "Assets feed you, liabilities eat you."
In the past such camps were limited to "high-achieving high school students," which we read as, "those trying to puff up their college resume." Now, the audience has expanded to grade-school students.
Many of the camps "[teach] campers how to rebalance portfolios, invest in real estate and use credit cards without getting dinged on fees."
Camp Millionaire, over a five day period, has its campers build a minieconomy , where the kids use mayo moola as their mock currency.
One little fucker, Andrew Adams, 10, told his mommy that "her credit-card billing cycle had changed, and that she wasn't keeping up with payments. Her delays were racking up late fees, jacking up her interest rate and hurting her credit score." Roughly translated as, "Mommy, you numbnuts! Get your shit together and pay the bills on time."
On the other hand, I guess it's not a bad idea to teach kids some financial sense now, so that they won't take out mortgages that they can't pay and rack up massive debt in the future.
--Senior Camp Counselor Travis
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 9:20AM
Should read, Show me the Mayo!
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 9:22AM
The foul language comes off as gratuitous. I think you're compensating for something.
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 9:22AM
What a wonderful way to make your kids into insufferable bores
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 9:25AM
Are you crazy?!? Half the industry and nine-tenths of the compensation disappear if the population at large becomes financially literate!
Why do you think public schools require 4 years of English and 0 seconds of personal finance? Because Shakespeare is more important that understanding credit card fees or shareholder rights (or for that matter, basic first aid) in today's sociey?
Actually it's because of greedy teacher unions that don't even fully understand the harm they are doing. But hey, we've built quite a few nice little cottage industries on it.
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 9:27AM
Why don't they just teach this shit in school and let kids have fun during the summer. I mean come on finance camp! Whatever happened to camp where you sleep in cabins and drink bug juice at meals, go rock climbing and swim in a lake. I pity our youth...
Posted by TheEngineer , Jul 03, 2008 9:29AM
I did something like this over ten years ago. It was Jullian Krinsky Business Camp. It was meant to be a summer camp with a couple hours of learning about basic understanding of the mercantile exchange, or real estate deals. No body came off like this.
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 9:39AM
When I was younger, I attended the Jeff Skilling Business Camp.
Inmate 4569-06
FMC, Baltimore
Baltimore, MD
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 9:43AM
No cursing.
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 9:45AM
And this one time at finance camp...
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 9:52AM
HAHAHA... as if I need yet another reason to beat my kids...
Posted by Joseph di Jersey City , Jul 03, 2008 9:53AM
A gold star to the first douchebag-in-training to say, "I don't lose money, I print it."
Posted by mrpink , Jul 03, 2008 10:09AM
LOL Joseph
Great, a 'Finance Camp'....pumping out more Prescott P. Hahn's for the Fashion Meets Finance mixers....joy.
-mrp
Picking the corn from between my teeth with a piece of tumbleweed from lovely Chicago.
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 10:09AM
This reminds me of what I see on my homepage almost every day. Interspersed with the articles about recession, financial crisis, job losses, downturns, inflation and forclosures are the ones about get-rich-quick, 50 best stocks, how to retire rich, world's richest people, and the best ways to get rich & stay rich.
Parents do this to the little bastards. Pathetic, isn't it?
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 10:18AM
I will kill the dog if you do not go to finance camp!!
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 10:23AM
Travis, lay off the mayo k?
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 10:24AM
What if your kid is fat and cant count money? Do you send them to both camps?
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 10:33AM
When do they schedule the daily beatings?
Posted by Anal_yst , Jul 03, 2008 10:40AM
Agreed with many, esp 9:27
Camp is for (at least for us heebs, dunno how it works on the goy side) crappy food, crappy bunks, abusive counsellors, akwardly learning how to spit game, and of course, rock climbing.
Also, Travis, don't f*cking encourage this mayo bullsh!t, honestly, I will beat the mayo out of you so help me god
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 10:44AM
Weak.
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 10:46AM
How is this any less disturbing than those fundamentalist Jeebus camps that Bible Belt parents send their kids too?
Posted by Travis , Jul 03, 2008 10:54AM
@ Anal_yst
It's my effort to uncover the mystery behind the mayo obsession here.
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 10:56AM
b/c Finance Camp doesn't teach you that the non financially literate are going to suffer eternal damnation and burn in hellfire... they probably just teach kids that the financially illiterate will simply go broke/bankrupt.
Posted by Debter , Jul 03, 2008 11:23AM
All camps suck. You're forced to do sh*t you don't like with people you've never met. It only dawns on you 20 f'in years later that it was fun and a good experience. Unless you were touched in a "special place" by some perv counselor. You can tell I had a wonderful childhood.
Posted by Anal_yst , Jul 03, 2008 11:53AM
@ Travis
check google analytics or whatever you guys use over there and match the mayo comments up with IP's, if its like alota the other bs here, its probably highly concentrated mayo
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 12:21PM
Very camp.
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 1:09PM
Who do you think gets picked last in a game of kickball at finance camp? Good god, what is happening to our youth!
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 1:12PM
Didn't the mayo comments start with the emergence of Mike Mayo?
In my free form childhood (my mother was too busy smoking cigarettes, eating chocolates, and reading detective novels to make actual plans for me) I ended up in a fundamendalist Christian day camp for a few weeks. (A neighbor with children thought it would be fun for me.) What I learned is that fundamentalist Christian children enjoy dying elbow macaroni in food coloring and threading them onto cords.
Posted by NSD , Jul 03, 2008 3:48PM
did debter just admit s/he was molested when they were younger?
Posted by Anal_yst , Jul 03, 2008 4:04PM
@ NSD
I think every kid that went to camp got molested at least once by some over-zealous/drunk/etc councellor
Posted by guest , Jul 03, 2008 4:29PM
Camp PointWalk (recently launched by infallible former BSAM CEO Rich Marin) is open and ready for business!
http://pointwalk.com/
Just think! Your children can be groomed to be the next disgraced CEO. Marin (in a truly delusional quote) says that PointWalk “exists to enable each member to benefit from the irreplaceable advice that comes from a true peer who has wrestled with and successfully overcome a similar challenge,” according to an online company pamphlet.
How could we all have been so wrong?? Who knew that "successfully overcoming a challenge" was a code phrase for negligence in properly overseeing hedge fund managers leading to a spectacular implosion of 2 hedge funds resulting in bringing your firm to the brink of bankruptcy and being sold for $2/share?
I'm failing to see the "success' in all of this ... except for creating the loss of an 80 year old institution.
Posted by guest , Jul 04, 2008 4:46PM
Speaking of Mike Mayo. Check out this post from another article. Oooops.
Posted by guest, Jul 02, 2008 7:28PM
good post 4:14. check out this post on the Gasbagarumor from last night.
The dumbest mother fucker on the tube is Chuck Gasbagarumor the Wind Man - named so for the wind he breaks instead of news. "Alls he says is we brook dat story, we brook dat story" Hey asshole, you beat a press release by 10 seconds. You couldn't break a fucking window with a bulldozer.
And,despite your supposed inside scoop from croney Dick Grasso (who uses you like the insecure fool that you are), you missed the real story this afternoon. There was no mention of his suit against the NYSE. That doesn't go away (like we wish you would). What a fucking dope you are to miss such an obvious pending matter. Come on up to our trading room and we will "breaka u face".
And, for your reading pleasure, check out the posting that Spitzer put out on this moron last night at 2am from another article. ROFL. You fucking dope.
The unfortunate reality of the CNBC impact on Bear is simple- Gasbagarumor. The guy milked Jimmy Cayne for years and then turned on him like he does all of his sources. They name Russell Sherman in the Vanity Fair article. Just ask Russell or his boss Elizabeth Ventura what they think of Gasbagarumor - the dumbest human being on television. The nicest thing they will call him is snake, scumbag, liar, moron and so on. They also make a very good point. Gasbag makes stories up for his own self promotion and frequently leaves out both sides of the story for his own personal benefit. He is as stupid as he is inarticulate and every pr person in the industry refuses to deal with the thug. Ditto for their bosses. In fact, Cayne, Thain, Mack, Diamon.....Blankfein, Niederauer,Dougan,.....think he is the scum of the earth and will fire any of their people who have anything to do with him. In fact, a number of industry folks have learned that lesson the hard way. You're FIRED! Are you listening Mike Mayo????
Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2008 7:05PM
Guest @ 4:46pm 7/4/2008. No, Mike Mayo isn't listening. He lost you when you went into a very similar rant to the four or five you've already posted on the same subject. It's a nice long holiday weekend. If you don't have social plans, take the opportunity to read a good book. Get a fresh perspective, for God's sake.