“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Confucius

There’s an advertising campaign running right now that promotes the web site: LoanToLearn. I have not actually heard the commercial since I’ve only seen it on the volume-less television set at the gym. But the URL was enough to make me go look at the site.

Actually I thought I was going to find a tool that teaches young adults how to use credit. Well, it turns out that it’s a site about borrowing money for college… similar to MyRichUncle.

Sure, kids need money for college, but before they get there they also need to learn how to establish and not abuse credit. I’ve mentioned this more than a few times here and here. In These Times had a good write up recently by Mischa Gaus called Debt Becomes You: Twenty-somethings face a life of looming loans.

Mischa writes, “The children of baby boomers are the new debtor class. Buckling under a heavy weight of debt, new workers step into an economy of low-wage and contingent work, a combination that makes the basics of adulthood increasingly unattainable.”

We need to start educating our youth sooner about money. Wells Fargo came up with a good idea. It is call Stage Coach Island and it’s an online role-playing video game that is aimed to teach kids the fundamentals of financial management.

At first glance, the effort seems like an altruistic approach to a very real problem but I’m sure some marketing person at Wells Fargo pitched this internally as a cradle-to-grave customer acquisition tactic. Oh well, you have to appreciate their cleverness and if a few kids learn the basics along the way… all the better.

Wendy Cole at Time said the same in her review of the game, “Teaching U.S. teens to manage their money — and their parents’ credit cards — will take more than an online game, but it’s a start.”

Does anyone have other thoughts about how to wipe out financial illiteracy?