The elderly gent with a broad smile and a walker ambled into the Georgia State University lecture hall on a dire mission.

Some 80 students in the cavernous hall looked up from their computers as Ralph Moor produced a device from a box. "How many of you have a tea bag squeezer?" he asked.

LOUIE FAVORITE/AJC (ENLARGE)

Ralph Moor speaking to an economics class at GSU. The former professor had good advice for the students based on his experiences.

BUSINESS Latest Headlines: Home Depot weighs its Olympic role  Ousted mortgage CEO seeks redemption with new company  What can Brown do? Ship an ancient Chinese army  Has ATL builder built fraud case against itself?  UPS new 'Big Brown' Kentucky Derby winner sponsor  • More Business News • Business Photo Galleries MOOR'S TRUISMS • "Individuals [should] take responsibility for their well-being by preparing for their survival." • "Human wants are unlimited, but resources to meet those wants are limited." • Learn from your mistakes. "He who stumbles twice over the same stone deserves to break his neck." • "Things refuse to be mismanaged [for] long."

Blank stares.

"Well, here one is," Moor said. "I show you this to illustrate that we are bombarded by so many things today that are of no use."

Moor, a retired educator and government official who at 95 is one of the school's oldest living alums, wants to teach the digital generation a lesson on a subject many are sorely lacking knowledge of: "the immutable laws of economics."

Those laws are as certain, he said, as gravity — and potentially more devastating than an oak tree crashing through a roof. Simply put, Moor, whose financial temperament was forged when Herbert Hoover was president, wants to warn today's young, easy spenders of the age-old "recipe for disaster: Agree to pay more than it is worth, no money down, low interest to start, take unlimited time to pay, spend more than is earned and have no savings."

Visiting the introductory economics class last week was part of his ongoing late-in-life passion of visiting college and high school classrooms with his message. "I want to poverty-proof people," he said before going in.

Moor's first rule — "spend less than is received" — is something people should have learned by third grade. But learning it and living it are two different things, according to figures from Nellie Mae, a student loan company owned by Sallie Mae.

A 2005 survey found that three-quarters of undergraduates use plastic and the average student owes $2,169 in credit-card debt. Often, those students sign up for those cards as freshmen while walking through student centers and tables set up by credit-card marketers hoping to snag fresh faces. By senior year, students are nearly $3,000 in such debt, according to the Nellie Mae survey. Add an average of $19,000 in college loans, and college graduates can carry a millstone from the start of their working career.

Universities are increasingly trying to combat this through personal finance education. Georgia State economics Professor Paula Stephan created a one-hour credit wake-up call for incoming freshmen called "Credit Card Craze." The idea, she said, came after talking with Moor, who believes many young people have never been taught the basics of real economics. Last fall, more than 600 students took the class.

Moor, who graduated in 1937 from Georgia Tech Evening School of Commerce, the forerunner of Georgia State, has led a varied career. He has served as an economics professor, executive secretary for the late U.S. Sen. Richard Russell and 22 years with Georgia's merit system.

He is twice a widower and, as he told the class, "The mother of our two sons and I together celebrated our golden divorce anniversary last year."

That statement drew a round of chuckles from the polite and attentive audience.

"He gets their attention, which is really important," Stephan said. "His life has spanned so much."

Shay Lemond, a junior in economics who watched Moor's presentation, said she was so taken by her fellow students' overuse of credit cards that she wrote a paper about it last fall for a class.

"It's all over school; [obtaining a card] is as easy as getting a pizza," she said. "Students have a very blasé attitude about credit cards, about student loans."

Lemond said many of today's students, who were raised by baby boomers, grew up with a sense of optimism, that things would always improve, that loans to make today better would get repaid tomorrow.

Michael Matthias, a finance major, said Moor's advice was pretty obvious — keep a low balance on credit cards, avoid having too many cards and invest for the future.

"But what seems obvious is not to a lot of people," he said.

Moor noted that the expected norms of life are greater today than ever: Two and three cars per family. Three or four TVs. Computers. Cellphones. Expanded wardrobes.

"Our grandchildren expect to start off with what we spent a lifetime achieving," he said. The list of wants is endless. Income, however, is not. At some point, the growing list of wants is not sustainable, he said.

Society will never go back to huddling around a single family radio for entertainment or growing vegetables in the garden out of necessity.

But he said a few old-fashioned, simple truisms can prevent a young person from a lifetime of trying to financially catch up.