Financial Literacy Starts Early: Building Better Money Habits and Stronger Communities
Financial literacy isn’t just about knowing how to balance a checkbook. It’s about understanding credit, making smart spending decisions, recognizing scams, building good habits, and having the confidence to make informed financial decisions.
On a recent episode of Grit Won’t Quit, Tom sat down with Troy Ewen, Community Bank Ambassador at OceanFirst Bank, for a conversation about financial education, community involvement, networking, and why the lessons we learn about money early in life can have a lasting impact.
Troy’s role is centered around one simple idea: the earlier people learn how money works, the better prepared they are for the future.
Making Financial Literacy Accessible to Everyone
Troy’s background in mortgage lending gave him years of experience helping people understand their finances. He regularly worked with credit reports and helped prospective homeowners understand what they needed to qualify for a mortgage.
Today, he gets to take that knowledge into the community full-time.
His financial literacy programs reach people at virtually every stage of life, from elementary school students to senior citizens. Topics include:
- Personal credit
- Budgeting
- Fraud and scam prevention
- Spending habits
- Living within your means
- Making responsible financial decisions
One of the most important parts of his work is making these topics accessible and understandable rather than overwhelming people with financial jargon.
The Earlier You Learn, the Better
A major theme of the conversation was the importance of teaching financial concepts to children and young adults before they are faced with major financial decisions.
Troy works with schools to introduce financial concepts in an age-appropriate way. One example involves having students create a budget for a hypothetical birthday party for a dog. The students have to decide what they want, what they can afford, and what they may have to give up.
It’s a simple exercise, but it teaches a fundamental financial lesson:
You can’t always have everything you want, so you have to make choices.
Those lessons can become increasingly important as young people enter the workforce and begin making larger financial decisions.
Tom reflected on how financial habits can eventually affect something as significant as buying a home. A person might not think twice about a large car payment, frequent restaurant meals, delivery fees, or expensive daily coffee. But those seemingly small decisions can affect how much money is available for saving, investing, or qualifying for a mortgage.
The key is learning to look at expenses over time.
A $15 lunch might not feel like a major expense. But five $15 lunches a week becomes $75. Over 52 weeks, that’s $3,900.
The individual purchase doesn’t seem significant. The annual number tells a very different story.
Convenience Has a Cost
The conversation also touched on the growing popularity of food delivery apps and other convenience services.
Troy uses receipts from third-party delivery apps when teaching financial literacy to high school students. Instead of simply telling students that convenience costs money, he shows them the numbers and lets them see the difference for themselves.
It’s a valuable lesson because many financial decisions don’t feel significant in the moment.
A coffee here.
A delivery order there.
Lunch out several times a week.
A subscription you rarely use.
None of them necessarily seems like a financial disaster. But collectively, those expenses can become thousands of dollars over the course of a year.
Learning to recognize those patterns early can make it much easier to develop healthy financial habits later.
Protecting People From Modern Scams
Financial literacy also means knowing how to protect yourself.
Troy discussed the growing problem of fraud, particularly scams targeting older adults. Unfortunately, scammers have become increasingly sophisticated, using technology to make fraudulent calls, messages, and communications appear legitimate.
Tom shared a story about receiving a call from someone pretending to be his bank regarding a business wire transfer. The caller sounded convincing and appeared to be contacting him from a legitimate source.
It turned out the call wasn’t from his bank at all.
That experience reinforced an important lesson: don’t assume a communication is legitimate simply because it looks or sounds real.
The rise of artificial intelligence adds another layer to the problem. AI can now be used to create convincing audio and video, making it easier for bad actors to impersonate people or manufacture believable situations.
Troy emphasized the importance of being cautious, particularly when someone is asking for sensitive information or creating a sense of urgency.
When in doubt, stop the conversation and contact the person or organization directly using a trusted phone number or communication channel.
OceanFirst’s Commitment to the Community
While financial literacy is a major part of Troy’s work, his role also reflects OceanFirst’s broader commitment to supporting local communities.
One example discussed on the podcast was Community First, a program designed to help nonprofits generate additional support.
Through the program, eligible nonprofits open an operating account and encourage supporters to connect their accounts. Once a nonprofit reaches the program’s minimum number of connected accounts, OceanFirst can make a donation based on the average quarterly balances associated with those accounts.
The concept creates a unique opportunity for community members to support a nonprofit without necessarily writing a traditional donation check.
According to Troy, the program has grown significantly, with approximately 130 organizations participating at the time of the recording.
Giving Back Through the OceanFirst Foundation
OceanFirst’s community involvement extends beyond financial literacy and banking programs.
Troy shared that OceanFirst recently surpassed $50 million in donations to nonprofits since 1998 through its foundation.
That kind of long-term commitment demonstrates how financial institutions can play a role beyond providing banking services. Local banks can become partners to nonprofits, schools, businesses, and community organizations.
For Troy, that community connection is an important part of why he enjoys his role so much.
Growth Doesn’t Have to Mean Losing Your Roots
The conversation also explored OceanFirst’s growth and expansion, including its planned acquisition of Flushing Financial.
As the bank expands into new markets, Tom raised an important question: how does a growing financial institution maintain the community-focused identity that helped make it successful in the first place?
For Troy, the answer is staying connected to the communities the bank serves.
Expansion can create new opportunities, but maintaining strong local relationships remains important. Whether it’s supporting a nonprofit, teaching a financial literacy class, or simply showing up for a local business, community involvement is built through relationships.
Building Better Connections Through Business Playground
Troy’s community involvement isn’t limited to his work at OceanFirst.
He’s also one of the organizers behind Business Playground, a networking group created to help local entrepreneurs become more comfortable with networking and public speaking.
The group was created by a small group of local business professionals who wanted to offer something different from some of the larger networking organizations.
Instead of focusing on a large crowd, Business Playground emphasizes smaller, more intimate gatherings.
That smaller environment can make a major difference for people who are uncomfortable walking into a room full of strangers and immediately pitching their business.
The goal is simple: get people talking.
Participants have the opportunity to explain who they are, what they do, what they’re working on, and what’s working—or not working—in their businesses.
Overcoming the Fear of Public Speaking
One of the lighter moments of the podcast came when Tom questioned whether people really have a fear of public speaking.
The answer from Troy was an emphatic yes.
But Business Playground is designed to help people work through that fear.
The same way financial habits become easier with practice, networking and public speaking become easier when you repeatedly put yourself in situations where you have to do them.
And sometimes the best way to overcome a fear is simply to start small.
That’s the philosophy behind keeping Business Playground relatively intimate while still bringing together entrepreneurs from different industries.
The Multiplier Effect of Community
Perhaps the biggest connection between Troy’s financial literacy work and his networking efforts is the idea of a multiplier effect.
Teach one child a good financial habit, and that child may eventually share it with friends or family.
Help one entrepreneur make a meaningful connection, and that connection can lead to another introduction, partnership, customer, or opportunity.
Support one local business, and you may help create opportunities for other businesses in the community.
Small actions can compound.
That’s true with money, relationships, business, and community involvement.
Start Small and Start Early
The conversation between Tom and Troy ultimately came back to one powerful idea: small decisions matter.
Learning how to budget at 10 can help prepare you for managing money at 20.
Learning about credit before applying for your first car loan can help prepare you for buying a home.
Learning how to recognize scams can protect you and your family.
Learning how to introduce yourself and talk about your business can open doors that might otherwise remain closed.
None of these lessons requires you to have everything figured out.
They simply require you to start.
And whether the goal is building financial confidence, supporting local nonprofits, growing a business, or becoming more comfortable putting yourself out there, the earlier you develop those skills, the more opportunity you have to benefit from them.
That’s what makes Troy’s work so important—and why conversations about financial literacy and community involvement deserve a much bigger audience.
Listen to the full episode of Grit Won’t Quit to hear more from Tom and Troy about financial literacy, OceanFirst’s community initiatives, Business Playground, networking, and building a stronger community together.
This podcast episode was filmed at Wingman Planning in Belmar.
