Building good credit as a student or young consumer can save more than $500,000 over a lifetime. This is one of the messages from the nation's top award winning Web site created by 17 year-old Andris McKinley of Frederick, Maryland. The National Endowment for Financial Education announced the winners last week for a competition based on the theme "The Credit Puzzle—How to Use It, and Not Abuse It." Nearly 1,000 students competed for cash awards, up to $5,000 each, in four categories essay, poster, web site and mixed media. While McKinley took first place for the Web site, Lubna Ahmad of Tempe, Arizona won first place for mixed media; Amy Zalud of Rockford, Illinois had the number one essay; and the first place poster went  to Grace Johnson of Phoenix, Arizona. To review the award winning web site visit www.cardweb.com/nefe.

Mr. McKinley is a junior at Gov. Thomas Johnson High School and the Career and Technology Center, both in Frederick, Maryland. He has maintained his own Web site on skateboarding for the past five years (www.sirdna.com). His Web site draws about 150,000 hits each month and produces consistent ad revenues. Dr. Candy Zentz, his teacher at the Technology Center says "He is an incredible young man, very talented, versatile and has an extremely bright future ahead in the world of business".

Andris is also president of local DECA chapter which is a national association of marketing students. Mr. McKinley recently received the top state award for designing the best icon, static banner ad, and multimedia ad for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as part of a special DECA competition. He will travel to Kentucky in late April to compete at the national level for the DECA competition.

   The Financial Literacy Awards program complements the NEFE High School Financial Planning Program, a seven-unit curriculum that teaches basic financial planning concepts to teen-agers. NEFE provides the program at no charge to public and private schools throughout the country in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service and participating Land-Grant University Cooperative Extension Services (CES); and with the Credit Union National Association, Inc. (CUNA) and Affiliates. Now in its fourteenth year, the NEFE High School Financial Planning Program has reached over 1.5 million young people throughout the U.S. The National Endowment for Financial Education is an independent, non-profit foundation dedicated to the goal of helping Americans improve the quality of their lives by providing them with information and skills that encourage sound financial decision making. For more information and the complete list of this year's winners visit www.nefe.org.