Cookies and Money

I am a proud Girl Scout, and have been so since I was a Brownie in 2nd grade. My sister has been a Daisy since her kindergarten years. We are a committed Girl Scout family, investing our time and energy in it wholeheartedly. 

Girl Scouts offers so much more as girl bonding, activities and challenges, badges, field trips, but since I am a young business aspirant I want to speak about the art of selling Girl Scouts Cookies. Cookie season is my absolute favorite. I double down on the classic chocolatey coconutty Samoas, and pitching the cookie choices to new as well as long term customers has always been very thrilling. My dad would patiently wait outside every house, while my sister and I climbed the stairs leading up to each house as cute little toddlers to when we were older girls. He would be our money manager support when we were younger elementary school kids. As I became an older Scout I managed the money transactions, keeping a log of cookies sold, cookies to be delivered, money owed and received from customers and finally tallying it all up to the troop. I also had a voice in deciding how we spend the commission we earned from the total packages sold. 

We learn these essential skills from daily experiences such as earning allowances from doing chores at home, but we need to be taught that formally too. Governor Newsom has signed the law that states that all California Public Schools will require one semester of Personal Financial Literacy for high school graduation starting the year of 2027. For those of us missing that date, we still need to be financially literate before we step into the world of college and work. For instance, budgeting tells us what we must save, and what can be used for discretionary spending; digging further into saving has so many varied options like a bank account where the money is safe, investing in companies (which I am still learning about), investing in our own small business, etc. I wish to share with others in my community what I have learned and also learn from them the concepts that I don’t know. This is the foundation for Teens Who Invest. We build financial futures together.

See you next time with another blog and hopefully sunny days :)

Ria Kumar

March 7, 2025