On 30 March at lunch, retired financial planner Roger Touw spoke at MGCI’s Key Club about the “Steps to Financial Success.” Touw, a former employee of Manulife Financial, addressed an issue many young adults face: a lack of financial planning and savings for the future.

Key Club’s secretary, Shuyi Wang, said that Key Club felt “this was an amazing experience for high school students to understand how the money system works and be prepared once they go to university.”

Photo: Varun Venkataramanan

Roger Touw talking about financial success. Photo: Varun Venkataramanan

The talk was attended by about 15 students, many of whom were Key Club members. Touw educated them about “the 4 keys to financial success”: time, the increase in monetary value over time; patience, the importance of setting aside small amounts of savings early on; discipline, not letting emotions influence decision making; and planning or investing in the future. In addition, he stressed the importance of planning for retirement—how ever far away it may seem—as well the importance of asset allocation. Afterwards, there was a question-and-answer session that many students took advantage of.

Overall, the students enjoyed the presentation and learned much from it.