March Smartness Michaelson Consumer Cup

The NCAA basketball tournament is March Madness, but Rhode Island gets a taste of March Smartness later this week. 

Teams from nine high schools across Rhode Island will compete in the 8th Annual LifeSmarts competition Friday at the State House. It’s a quiz bowl type event focused on financial literacy and the winner will receive the coveted Consumer Cup. 

Peter Kerwin from the Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority joined The Rhode Show with more.

The Michaelson Consumer Cup is named to honor former Rhode Island Attorney General Julius Michaelson.  He passed away last year and the folks at the Rhode Island Jump$tart Coalition, who are organizing this event for the 8th year now thought this would be a great way to recognize someone who was a leader in the effort to promote consumer protection and education here in Rhode Island.

LifeSmarts is a program of the National Consumers League and the competition brings high school teams together to test their knowledge of consumer topics including: personal finance, technology, environment, health and safety, and consumer rights and responsibilities.  In addition to winning the Michaelson Consumer Cup, the winning team will earn the right to represent Rhode Island and compete with state champions from across the country in the national LifeSmarts competition which will be held in Philadelphia next month.

This year’s field has all the elements of a great tourney—we’ve got returning champs, a few mid-majors, and a couple of newcomers who could be Cinderella stories.  The nine teams are: Barrington, Burrillville, Cumberland, East Greenwich, Lincoln School, Mt. Hope, North Providence, North Smithfield and Tolman.

If you go to www.rijumpstart.org and click the link under the graphic of the Michaelson Consumer Cup, you’ll find a video breaking down all the matchups.  There are only three teams which have won this event in the last seven years and they are all squaring off in the first bracket so that is going to be a real barnburner—North Providence (4 time champs), Barrington (2 time champs) and Lincoln School (defending champs).

This is a really great way to give young people a valuable lesson in the importance of being a smart consumer.  Too many times, adults lecture teens with the old refrain, “You’re going to be an adult soon and will have to start making decisions.”  But teens in the United States have an estimated annual purchasing power of $200 billion.  They are making money decisions everyday and LifeSmarts helps them establish good consumer habits that will hopefully last a lifetime.