Noureddine El Alam delivered his talk titled “Start Small. Exploit Time. Gain Wealth” to Lowers and Uppers.
Noureddine El Alam, Instructor in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, delivered a presentation on financial literacy to Lowers and Uppers during Community Time last Friday. The presentation, titled “Start Small. Exploit Time. Gain Wealth,” provided a brief overview of the content provided in his class, Mathematics-440, Financial Literacy Seminar.
In his talk, El Alam discussed the concept of compound interest. He emphasized the importance of investing during youth to safeguard future financial security.
“The one giant advantage you all have, and that people like myself don’t have, is your greatest asset. Time, your age. You’re young. You have a long runway to fall and get up, to trip, to make mistakes, to grow. If you are 50 or 60, you don’t have much time [anymore]. So you want to use age to your advantage to let the compounding do the work for you,” said El Alam.
He continued, “You have time, and you have health, presumably. But you probably don’t have a lot of money. When you’re old, you don’t have much time, and you probably don’t have health. You may have money, you may not. But the worst-case scenario is to be old and not to have money. You have no time, you have no money, and you have no health. So [right now] you have time, and you have your health. So I want you to leverage those assets to accumulate wealth.”
As a board member of the Philanthropy and Investment Club at Andover (PICA), Anna Lu ’27 had some prior experience with the topics El Alam discussed. She thought that El Alam made the topic easily accessible for all attendees and that the question-and-answer session towards the end helped deepen audience comprehension of the topics.
“I think Mr. El Alam did a pretty good job of adapting to the skill level of everyone. He explained it in a way where students with little to no finance background could understand, while students with more knowledge could also ask really good questions at the end… It’s also cool to hear from students with more experience and background knowledge because they asked a lot of great questions, and students with less experience will gain that understanding from that. He did a great job of reaching students of all levels,” said Lu.
Aly Blakeney, Instructor in History and Social Science, teaches three economics courses at Andover. She commented on the value of baseline financial education and shared that, while the school offers many educational opportunities, there remains room for improvement.
“[Financial literacy] is absolutely vital knowledge in the world we live in. Yes, you guys have access to all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips with the internet, but if you don’t even know what you don’t know, you don’t even know where to start. So it’s important for us to at least introduce these topics,” said Blakeney.
She continued, “Ideally, I would love to see a weekly seminar that’s required, at least for a year. But I think financial literacy education is something that should be woven into every grade of high school level because there’s so much to cover. [Andover has] made great strides, both in economics and financial literacy. The fact that those are even courses offered is amazing. However, we could expand more on either clubs or integrated curriculum for the student experience at [Andover].”
Kalista Kuemmerle ’28, a board member of Women in Finance, believes financial literacy is less accessible to women in particular, a disparity her club works to mitigate. She suggested that Andover expand financial education more broadly.
“There is a lack of financial literacy, at least among women, because finance sometimes makes [itself] inaccessible for women to enter. So there is a lack amongst younger people that could be fulfilled through integrating education about financial literacy…[Women in Finance has] helped me a lot with knowing about these kinds of things, but maybe it would be interesting to see [Andover] doing more mandatory classes or integrating financial literacy education into the curriculum for everyone,” said Kuemmerle.
Cyrus Emami ’28, another board member of PICA, emphasized the importance of a stronger focus on literacy in individual stock analysis and on investment opportunities beyond stocks. He added that exploring these subjects further in classes and clubs could help students gain a more comprehensive understanding of the market.
“[The talk has] given me perspective, in terms of [club] curriculum for the rest of this year through next year, in that we should talk about [Exchange-Traded Funds] and different indexes, which Mr. El Alam talked a lot about. We should go more into depth on those and other ways to build wealth, not just individual stocks,” said Emami.
He continued, “We could grow off of Mr. El Alam’s financial literacy class and add a class that teaches more into the specifics of investing… If there was a course centered around investing and looking at the markets and understanding how to make better investments, that would be a cool course to add.”
