TD Bank Celebrates National Teach Children to Save Month with Financial Literacy Lessons from Maine to Florida

CHERRY HILL, N.J. and PORTLAND, Maine, March 31 /PRNewswire/ -- TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank®, believes it is very important to educate the next generation of Americans about saving so they're financially savvy for years to come! To celebrate National Teach Children to Save Month in April, TD Bank will conduct nearly 400 financial literacy lessons through its WOW!Zone program to more than 10,000 students in more than 300 classrooms from Maine to Florida. TD Bank will also introduce the free WOW!Zone program throughout the New England area for the first time.

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Many children are not exposed to financial education at school or at home. The average 12th-grader last year scored 48 percent on the annual Jumpstart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy test. In 1997, the average score was 57 percent.

To kick off National Teach Children to Save Month, TD Bank is also launching its WOW!Zone program in New England classrooms in April. The TD Bank WOW!Zone is a free, interactive financial literacy program for grades K–12 that features both in-school and online components. About 300 TD Bank employees in New England have been mobilized to begin teaching the free lessons to local schools in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts. About 150 classes are expected to take place in these states. Through TD Bank University, these employees receive more than eight hours of training on classroom management, what impacts learning and what makes an effective learning environment before taking to the classrooms. With teacher-written lesson plans that were developed in accordance with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards, WOW!Zone instructors take students on an exciting journey through the world of banking and finance.

The TD Bank WOW!Zone reaches nearly 10,000 students each month. TD Bank instructors volunteer an average of 5,000 hours of classroom and in-store instruction to 4,900 classes and 100,000 students each year. Students, parents and educators can access games, and learning activities at http://www.tdbank.com/wowzone/wowzone.asp.

Here are some fun tips for parents to share with their children:

• Use a calculator and show them how much money they will have after one, five or ten years if they save XX dollars every week/month. Then post a chart that shows the progress they're making over time.

• Give them an incentive… "For every XX dollars you save, I'll add XX more dollars to your account." This may be hard during this time of a tough economy, but even a dime for every dollar will help them understand the reward.

• If there is a particular item your child wants, have them cut a picture of it from a magazine or print it from a website. Have them post it in a place where they will see it often as a reminder of the goal they are working towards. The purpose is to encourage them not to spend on small items that are not as important.  Show kids the benefits of saving. Show them pictures of different items they want at different dollar amounts. The more you save, the more you get.

• Have a family game night with games like Monopoly Junior, Payday and Life. There are many online games that teach kids about money. Check out the game room section at www.tdbank.com/wowzone for crossword puzzles and word searches that focus on money. For teens, there is a fantasy stock market game where each player starts with $50,000 of fantasy money that allows them to buy and sell stock and ranks them against other players

About TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank®

TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, is one of the 15 largest commercial banks in the United States with $152 billion in assets, and provides customers with a full range of financial products and services at more than 1,000 convenient locations from Maine to Florida. TD Bank, N.A., is headquartered in Cherry Hill, N.J., and Portland, Maine. TD Bank is a trade name of TD Bank, N.A. For more information, visit www.tdbank.com.  

TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, is a member of TD Bank Financial Group (TSX, NYSE: TD) of Toronto, Canada, a top 10 financial services company in North America and one of the few banks in the world rated Aaa by Moody's.

SOURCE TD Bank

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