Consumer Litigation Veterans Work to Make Kids Masters of Money

I have long believed in the old saying there is a sucker born every minute. Everyday new scams are invented. Consumers need to be wary and always approach offers with a skeptical viewpoint. -- Robert Parlette, Consumer Law Attorney

News provided by

Young Adult Consumer Education Trust

Dec 07, 2011, 05:00 ET

TUCSON, Ariz., Dec. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- It's never too early to teach financial literacy and to encourage conversations about money, whether it's face-to-face or online, said Robert Parlette, a consumer law attorney. After seeing the myriad ways people are duped, he and fellow attorney Scott Kane are determined to build a global community of financially savvy young consumers.

Parlette and Kane have spent the better part of their legal careers helping consumers get treated fairly and established the Young Adult Consumer Education Trust (YACET) to develop financial literacy curriculum. ConsumerJungle.org was the result; a website that's fun, engaging and educational for young audiences.

"Online education is becoming an important part of how we learn, said Michael Staten, Ph.D., director of the Take Charge America Institute, part of the University of Arizona's Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences. "Because of its immediacy, it offers help with real-time decisions if someone is making an online purchase or just researching their options. Gaming rewards players who make their way through increasingly challenging learning scenarios. It makes our visitors hungry to learn more."

The attorneys' partnered with the Take Charge America Institute to expand the capacities of ConsumerJungle.org. After two years of research and testing, a brand new ConsumerJungle.org has been launched, expanding the financial education online for tweens, teens and young adults.

Many of the ideas for the website are grounded in lessons the attorneys learned from litigating consumer issues. Parlette said that the world today has an extremely sophisticated financial system with very few knowing how it works. ConsumerJungle.org is complemented with a financial literacy curriculum website developed by the Family Economics and Financial Education project (FEFE), part of the Take Charge America Institute.

Now with Consumer Jungle's new and improved website, Parlette and Kane say they're willing to expand this partnership to develop clever video games that have financial lessons embedded, giving them the tools to survive in a real world consumer jungle.

SOURCE Young Adult Consumer Education Trust