The week is flying by, it’s incredible to think how much we’ve learned in such a short time at MBV. We are proud to have our partner Piper Sandler Companies as our sponsor for Financial Freedom Day, where we gained important insight into topics such as credit, budgeting, values, and much more.
Our opening keynote, ‘Money and Values,’ was given by Nathan Dugan of Share Save Spend, LCC. We were all feeling pretty tired at the beginning of the day, but Nathan’s infectious energy helped us think about our values and how we reflect that in our spending habits. In a world that is so focused on materialism, it was refreshing to hear Nathan help us learn how to avoid living beyond our means. He wisely said, ‘The choices we make with our money can change the world.’ This is extremely important to keep in mind as we work on our business plan and align our finances with our values.
To help us further think about how we strategize using money, we went into Financial Literacy breakouts to talk about credit, budgeting, investing and identity theft. We had very knowledgeable speakers from Cahill Financial Advisors, North Star Resource Group, Hiway Credit Union, and Family Means/CCCS – thank you for volunteering your time!
Today, our companies have been hard at work putting together the business plan. With presentations tomorrow, we’re feeling the pressure to get everything together so we can rehearse before facing the judges. The Business Plan is a comprehensive overview of our product or service, complete with marketing, operations, and finances. It requires a lot of cooperation, good leadership, and well-applied skillsets. Thankfully, MBV has been preparing us all week for just this moment!
After lunch, we headed to breakouts on philanthropy and a Q&A with a financial professional. We learned how important philanthropy is to an organization because it creates social responsibility and connectedness with our community, while also giving us an opportunity to further align ourselves with our values. Philanthropy is a commonly overlooked aspect of developing a business plan, but so important! We also got to sit with a financial professional and ask them all of our burning questions about finance. What’s a CD? Should I use a Money Market account? What credit card is best? A lot of great questions and answers came from this session. We had such amazing volunteers from 3M, U.S. Bank, General Mills, Carlson Capital Management, and Stearns Bank. Thank you to everyone who came to speak with us!
Tonight is going to be a long night finalizing the business plan, so wish us luck!
