Today’s students today are serious consumers.

Young people influence so many buying decisions, companies spend millions of dollars on research and millions more on targeting their advertising messages to them.

Young people are sophisticated shoppers and are more label and designer conscious than ever before.

But what they don’t seem to know is how to value and budget their money.

That’s why the work a group of Vicksburg area bankers did with students in the Vicksburg Warren School District is so important.

Trustmark National Bank employees Tyler McNeal and Ryan Lee spent time recently with students in Dana Tankersley’s sixth-grade class and taught students lessons in financial literacy, like how to budget and save their money.

Those classes should be a required part of every education. Some of us older folks had to learn those lessons the hard way and wish we had benefited from formal education on financial literacy.

The classes included how to make good money management decisions using real-world examples.

Trustmark employees Katie Ferrell and Debora Kinnebrew also spoke with students at Sherman Avenue Elementary and Beechwood Elementary.

Bankers Debra Kette and Mandy Thornell of RiverHills Bank spent time with second grade students at South Park Elementary School.

The Trustmark and RiverHills employees were in the classroom as part of the Mississippi Bankers Association’s sixth year of “A Banker in Every Classroom” program.

Today’s students are learning and doing earlier than we ever imagined they would. Teaching lessons like how to plan for a rainy day and learning the value of earning money and making good decisions about how to save or spend that money are more critical for young people than ever before.

We’re thankful to these Vicksburg area banking professionals who took time out of their day to provide these important lessons for our community’s students.