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The Singleton Foundation is on a mission to inspire entrepreneurship and make financial competence fun, engaging and accessible to all. Shelley Miles, the nonprofit’s CEO, sat down to talk about how they are working to achieve this goal in this episode of the Work in Progress podcast.
“By being financially literate, you have the skills to plan your life and to plan it with confidence. Financial literacy is really a key to having control over your life. It’s part of being healthy so in the same way that you want to eat right and you want to exercise, you need to take care of your money as well to have a successful future. We’re really looking for people to have good financial habits that become their routine.”
“Financial literacy is really a key to having control over your life.” – Shelley Miles, Ceo, singleton foundation
Miles says Singleton has a unique approach to promoting financial literacy—storytelling. “We’ve decided to use entertainment as the entry point to learning these skills, because we really think that financial knowledge doesn’t need to be daunting or hard or boring. It should be engaging and it should be fun to do so it becomes a habit,” Miles tells me.
Singleton has a special interest in helping Millennials achieve financial competence. Consider these statistics.
- Only 44% of Millennials are financially literate
- The average Millennial is $42,000 in debt
- Collectively, we have $1.5 trillion in student loan debt
- The under-25 age group is the fastest-growing group filing for bankruptcy
To reach this particular group, Miles says, they started Million Stories, an entertainment platform that they hope will inspire, entertain, and transform lives. The site features stories about handling everyday financial matters like credit and banking, as well as stories about starting your own business. The lessons learned there can be applied to all your life experiences. That’s where financial competence and entrepreneurship intersect.
Million stories: Inspiring, entertaining, and transforming lives.
“Today in the world—even before COVID-19—entrepreneurship is so important. You have to have a mindset to be able to react to new situations, go find out the information, find out what you need to know and have flexibility and the grit to pick yourself up and go do this. A lot of that is about pivoting and that’s what entrepreneurs do.”
“Learning about entrepreneurship is really basic and it’s the way that people can be in charge of their own lives. So if you think of your life as a business and you’re the head of it, you think about how you’re going to run it in the way that benefits you.”
Million Stories achieves its goal—it’s entertaining and informative. Check it out!
And I encourage you to listen to my full interview with Shelley Miles for Work in Progress here, or find us wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the logo below ????. Thanks for listening!
Episode 146: Shelley Miles, CEO, Singleton Foundation
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts
Also, check out financial tips for entrepreneurs in this challenging economy from our media partner Million Stories. Watch their videos and check out their resources here.
