Finance Club: A New Initiative Led by Dr. Koss

By Hania Raza '24 
One of the many new clubs available for high school students is the finance club. Several students have joined the club in order to learn more about investing, money management, finance, and the stock market. Dr. Koss, faculty advisor of the finance club and high school math teacher, said that students can learn various skills from this club, even if they do not have much knowledge about finance yet. 

“It is really geared towards anyone, but especially towards people who are interested in these things and know about them, but maybe have been intimidated because some of the vocabulary and some of the way people talk about these things gets really complicated, and people kind of get afraid, a little bit, of it. So this is a way for students who are interested, or even some teachers around here to have a friendly introduction to all of this stuff.”  Dr. Koss said, “We are not going to do anything really crazy complicated. It is really designed to be introductory.”

Konur Onufer ‘24 said that he joined to learn more about investing and finance, so that he would not have to worry about it in the future. “Investment, done correctly, is one way to not only make substantial amounts of money, but to secure a reliable source of income that I will carry with me even after I retire,” Onufer said. “As of now, I do not know very much about the stock market, so I have decided to join this club in an attempt to learn.”

Students can learn many important techniques from the finance and investment club. In later years, its members will not have to worry about investing their money because they will have learned important techniques that they will use for the rest of their lives. “So my main goal, I mean, like I said, when you are talking about money management or investing or anything like that, there is some lingo, there are some techniques, there are some tools that you need to learn how to use,” Dr. Koss said, “and knowing about that stuff is, of course, going to help you out, and again, make you less afraid or less anxious about getting started.”

Dr. Koss also expressed that there is a big advantage for students who learn about investing early. He explained the concept of compound interest. “The earlier you get started with this, the more you will have an opportunity to grow the money that you have to get more in the end,” Dr. Koss said. “And if you start earlier, you can really get ahead, whereas if you wait to get started until you are older, or something like that, you do not have as many of those opportunities to take advantage of the compounding process where this money grows at, what is called, an exponential rate.”

Dr. Koss wants the members to learn that these tools will help them to have a better life in the future. “So I hope that some people, some students, currently here, will take that to heart, and realize that, if they get started on this early, they are going to be able to live a much more comfortable life later on,” Dr. Koss said. “When they need that money for retirement, or if they have kids, they need to pay for college for their kids, it might be any of those big things, buying a house is another big one.”

The Finance club helps to teach its members how to l benefit from learning finance. “Everyone can benefit greatly from the knowledge of how to invest,” Onufer said. “I would recommend this club to anyone.”