Interview #1

Octavio Blanco
Reporter/ Journalist
CNN Money
In my process of looking for professionals to interview in my field to mentor and aid me through
my research, I contacted several individuals via written and e-mail. Unfortunately, I could not
interview a majority of them because they were preoccupied with other projects, unavailable due
to maternity leave, and some just said they could not. However, when Ms. Kucik left and we had
a substitute, I discovered that the substitutes son was a reporter for CNN Money, and that he was
interested in my research and was willing to help me out.
We started off the interview by introducing ourselves, and I asked him how he got into what he
did. He told me about his path and his choice not to continue college after two years, working in
the professional sector, going back to school, and eventually working for CNN then progressing
as a reporter and journalist. He mentioned some challenges of his job, about the difficulties of
writing a concise article full of details and making it interesting enough for it to get reads, but not
making the click-bait, a phrase that over-hypes the article. Some other struggles and challenges
included getting interviews with people for people to mention in the article who are sometimes
difficult, and even finding a topic or aspect of a current event to focus on.
A personal question that I had that corresponded with my research was the question of whether if
culture and media play a part in if any, in the number of people that invest after movies such as:
The Stock Market and Wolf of Wall St. along with other social media mediums, because my
friends were extremely interested in investments after the movie and actually started
participating in the Stock Market game and even went on to buy stock on their own. He said
while the media chooses to portray some components of the economy differently, it is really up
for the audiences take on it that changes their investment and spending options. It is not the
medias job to tell the people what to do, it is there to inform people of certain aspects. There are
always different sides to a story, so an informed consumer would research in depth from all
angles before choosing to spending money or take action on something.
His article on Route 40 and the booming Korean population and booming local Korean
businesses struck my interest on his take about immigrants and financial literacy among
immigrant families, being an immigrant myself. I asked him about financial literacy, and how it
tied into everyday life. He said that in addition to the language barrier the common immigrant
faces many challenges such as financial, educational, and more. The financial and educational
components overlap in terms of financial literacy, a topic on which I asked the question of the
lack of investing for immigrant families and how it caused economic stagnation and promoted
further illiteracy. He stated that for the most part.. Im gonna make that generalization to say
that most immigrant families are trying to take care of themselves day to day, the here and now,

because they came to a new country with limited resources and while theyre loving and doing
everything for their children, for their future, theyre not themselves thinking far enough in the
future for what they can do with the limited amounts of money or resources they have at their

disposal. So that means that theyre not teaching their kids about investments because to them
the investments are, sort of, out-of-reach because they dont have a lot of money so how could
you be investing? Sure there are ways that you can invest where you dont need a lot of money
all at once but most of the immigrants dont know about these tools or arent secure about them
so theyre not teaching their kids to invest. But what they do teach to their children is how to
spend money wisely, or things like that. I think the thing that can be done is just making sure that
students in school are being educated about what investing is and about the different levels of
investing for different purposes and for different levels of income.
After we discussed financial literacy for immigrant families, I asked Mr. Blanco about financial
literacy and the presence of financial literacy education in schools. He stated that financial
literacy education is a vital component of students education and islearning about credit,
learning how to pay bills, figuring out tax code, and so much more, and needs to be taught to
high school students and schools should be more involved in making sure students are financially
literate because it will be extremely beneficial later on especially when they are in a lot of debt
from college, and they should understand the causes and effects and how theyre getting out of
debt and how theyre going to pay it back and what it is that they are giving up. Debt makes it
incredibly hard for students to start a life, buy a home, buy a car, get married, start a family
His answer underscored the many and frequently mentioned positive impacts that financial
literacy can have on students. The many branches of financial literacy he stated covers the
general goals and aspects of financial literacy that students can strive to improve in.
Reflection
I think it well pretty well and very smoothly, it will help tremendously because Mr.
Blanco supported the things I have read in my sources and gave personal insight as well. Some
of the things to improve on are my ums because while listening to the recording I sounded a bit
unconfident. Another thing to improve on is more questions to directly support my project. I
could not figure out how to do that without creating a leading question that would goad Mr.
Blanco to answer a certain way. He explained his personal opinion on why the immigrant
families are more economically stagnant and what can be done to improve the current situation,
which is important because not everyone can afford expensive investment options and this
situation can apply to other families as well. On my next one, I will try to sound more confidant
and also try to think of new questions to ask the expert.

Interview #2
John Hong
Accountant
Financial Advisor

After my first interview with Mr. Blanco, I looked and looked for another interview that could
supply an aspect of financial education and financial literacy outside of our local Howard County
region but could not find one. I wanted an outside aspect because I could and did easily talk to
adults within Howard County and because I lived in it I was aware of the standards of education.
Because my research had to do with financial education and aid for those students of the lower
economic classes and/ or those who could not afford college without going into tremendous debt
(the 99% of Americans), it did not feel right to me that my research would only have opinions of
those from Howard County, one of the most wealthy counties in the nation (Mr. Blanco grew up
in Howard County and attended Atholton High School). Even when looking for professors, I
emailed and mailed professors and professionals away from Howard County, but still local
enough to be valid.
When my father hosted a company dinner, I met Mr. Hong, the financial advisor. He grew up in
Korea, and moved the Virginia in middle school, which was a background story I was very
familiar with, for I had done the same in elementary school. He was very good at keeping track
of numbers and math, and so he went into accounting because of the slight language barrier.
Numbers are a universal language, and therefore it was easier for him to go into this field than it
would have been for him to go into english-based subjects. When we were sitting around and
talking, I was put on the spot as I was one of the two students in the room, and I began to talk
about my project, different components of my research that made it unique and beneficial, and
pretty much the marketing speech that I gave in school. My father mentioned that Mr. Hong was
the finance guy, so afterwards I went upto him and spoke with him about the general economy,
plummeting oil prices, and my project.
This was not a formal, set up interview, but I asked similar questions and it provided me with a
plethora of information I could relate to on a personal level.
When I began talking to him, I explained my project first. I talked about my original intentions
of researching stock and investments with surpluses of money or money made by students from
doing chores and tasks for money that could be saved and invested in order to make the financial
burden of college less burdensome, and how the focus of my research changed from dealing with
surpluses to lowering and eliminating student debt when I saw the everso increasing student
debt, and how that ultimately changed so that it was focused on student debt of those students of
the lower economic class. I gave him the details and plans for financial education ingrained in
schools and told him of the current presence of financial education in schools, which is ingrained
into American Government and Politics as well as different Career and Technology Education
electives. I talked about my research and about how studies showed that financial education is
most effective when the audience is interested in the topic being taught, and how interest is
stirred up by how fitting the topic is to the member of the audience. So, the best way to teach
financial literacy would be to have financial advisors that give advice and lessons to a specific
demographic fit for that lecture. For example a high school and early college student with little to
no financial knowledge would take a Intro to Financial Responsibilities course, in which they
will learn how to balance a checkbook, put down payment on things, use and manage a credit
card, and how to finance daily life. This would contrast the middle aged workers who are

seriously concerned with saving for retirement.

After I had explained all of this and said that I would like to know how I can better my research
and have it more diverse and fitting to more people, he took me back to the beginning and
identified the problem. I was building my tower of research on a hypothetical situation. It was
that financial education would cost money, and if those students do not have the extra money to
invest they probably do not have enough to spend on frequent financial advisors. So, if financial
advice/ education was to be free, it would dull the demographic separation, inducing a loss in
interest, thus leading to a failed lesson inefficient for any of the demographics that were cut into
one clump for the vague financial advice session. In order to hypothesize the results and benefits
of my project, I would have to set a firm foundation on which my research is built upon. Would I
make these classes government issued in schools? My primary concern with this was that it
would be boring and time consuming, as well as dull and ineffective due to scheduling in schools
and the number of kids that want to take it. It would not be effective to have four students in one
class, just as it would not be effective to had 60 students in one class to save time and manpower.
Would these classes be offered after school? The problem with offering students programs and
sessions after school is that some students would not be able to stay after due to transportation or
because they are not initially interested in it enough to come to the first, introductory session.
Also these after school sessions will be vague to serve the greater audience as well. There were
many concerns with each method of education, and we concluded that a mandated one week
period a year for high school students and biannual program for college students would be
beneficial, and students would take surveys to see which lecture demographic they belonged in.
Reeling in students with the benefits of financial education, we would stir up financial literacy as
well as interest in the field, so that students may seek out financial advice and research on their
own in the future.
The second eye opening thing that Mr. Hong pointed out was that students could in fact, study
financial literacy on their own and receive free financial advice online. He spoke of how when he
was studying back in the day he had to shadow and intern to learn about things, and actually
go the library, look through the index, and find everything he wanted to know. Now, that process
is incredibly shortened with the use of a computer and internet, available in almost all places in
America, especially at libraries. The students, if they have the interest and will to do so, can go to
the library or open a computer and research where they are in terms of financial knowledge and
what they can do to improve their financial status as well as save and decrease future student
debt. This was an aspect that I never thought about because it was too obvious. Anyone could
have access to decades of financial research at the end of the fingertip, just as I have done in this
class. This threw me off a little bit, because it was not my job to help others become more
studious in learning finance to better their lives. However, when thinking of the common good
and the welfare of the economy, it is good to encourage and advocate for financial education
because some people do not even consider it due to ignorance of the topic.

Reflection
Because of the personal connection I had with Mr. Hong it was a fluid and colloquial
conversation. While there were no exact quotes or statistics that he provided for my research, his
personal story of how he learned and fought through struggles motivated me and showed me an
alternative way of learning, the independent way. From what he said about how he studied from
books and spoke with people, interning them. shadowing the best to observe and learn was eye
opening, because a lot of people, including those that I have read of in my research often relied
on government too much on their person lives, like financial literacy. A lot of people's attitude
was that if they did not teach it in school, it must not be important. However, some parents/
guardians are not capable of teaching their children and also are not capable of affording
financial advice and financial education to their children, and therefore government issued
financial education sessions would be beneficial. This interview was very fluid and ideas
transferred quickly, but one of the things to improve on would be to make sure my phone had
enough storage to record the whole interview because when I went back to listen to it the
interview was cut off at 22 seconds (Thanks to iPhone and its limited memory space). He
supplied concepts that I had overlooked simply because they were too obvious and refreshed me
on what my true purpose was.