Chelsea High School has won the Michigan Personal Finance Challenge State Championship for the seventh year in a row.
The CHS team, consisting of Austin McAherty, Caroline Knight, Allie Browning Perry, and Thomas Olaveson, recently won a state championship in this challenge, where students compete against other students around the state and demonstrate their knowledge of personal finance. I was chosen as a champion.
This event is organized and sponsored by the Michigan Council on Economic Education, Michigan Credit Union Foundation, Financial Planning Center, and LMCU. After hearing this exciting news, Sun-Times News (STN) reached out to coach and advisor, CHS teacher Matt Pedrow, to ask him about the team and their success.
“The Chelsea students were successful because they put a lot of time and effort into preparing for the state competition, including practicing case studies after class,” Pedrow said.
He said these case studies are based on fictitious families and require students to create financial plans around retirement, debt, taxes, and savings, and then students are asked to correct mistakes their families are making. , said he would try to create a financial plan that looks like this: Improves overall happiness.
“The four CHS students did an outstanding job of analyzing the case study, finding the flaws, and creating a meaningful plan for the families,” Perrault said of the state's challenge.
One of the difficult factors for the family, Perrault said, was whether or not to receive the pension his wife was provided by her employer. He said: “Caroline Knight had the brilliant idea of calculating her total pension against her 401,000 investments.”
“The judges were also very impressed with the way Austin attacked the mortgage to reduce the total amount of interest paid,” Perrault said. “All four students presented like professionals and we heard from multiple judges how impressed he was with all four students.”
In any sport, when a team wins two or three championships, usually in succession or within a short period of time, that team is called a dynasty. He has 7 wins in CHS, so it's actually 1 win. STN asked Pedro about this.
“I think CHS has been successful because our students have worked so hard to prepare for the state finals,” he said. “Chelsea has won the state title seven years in a row, so I know the other schools are very worried about us losing. But this year's students put a lot of effort into this contest. I poured it.”
He said everyone met multiple times to work on other case studies, and part of the competition revolved around a quiz bowl, so they had to learn all the relevant terminology and current economic indicators.
An example question was, “As of 2023, what percentage of U.S. workers will be earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour?” (Answer: around 1.5%)
“It's a tough job, but some of our students, even though they participate in extracurricular activities, really put in the effort it takes to win a state title,” he said.
The CHS team will advance to the Personal Finance Challenge National Finals in Cleveland in May, where they will compete against more than 40 of the top teams from across the nation.
