Teenagers already know plenty about spending money, but now a U.S. school is helping them learn how to save it.

New York City’s first student-run bank opened last week at the Fordham Leadership Academy.

Students at the school will be able to open savings accounts*. All the tellers* are students, as well. The goal is to teach good financial habits to the kids working there and the ones with accounts.

“It gives our kids the opportunity to see something different that normally wouldn’t have come in to their lives, especially at a high school level,” said Fordham Leadership Academy Principal Richard Bost.

“What’s even more important is it spreads through the whole school and all the other schools on the campus, so that all the kids see the opportunities, not only in terms of jobs, but also more importantly in terms of financial planning and investment and saving money.”

“It gives me the opportunity to bring financial literacy* to all my classmates and talk about budgeting*,” said student intern* Russalee Brown. “And I learned a lot from this program.”

“Youth of our age usually buy sneakers*, buy clothes, but I want to tell them that they have to save money for the future,” said Chuckwueloka Mouka, another student intern.

The bank is a branch of North Fork Bank.

“We’re trying to use our student interns as ambassadors* of financial literacy and get them out to spread the message to their classmates,” said branch manager David Issac.

School Chancellor Joel Klein was excited about the bank’s opening.

“It’s a real bank with real services and I’m hoping all the students open up savings accounts so they learn that putting money away, earning interest, is really smart,” he said.

The students run the bank with the help of a professional manager. They went through a rigorous* training program and worked as tellers and customer service representatives at North Fork branches over the summer.

“We had an opportunity to work with other customers, an opportunity to experience a lot of things in banking,” said another student intern, Eunice Somuah.

These students are getting much more than an education in banking, they also get paid too, US$11 an hour.

(SD-Agencies)