6 High School Financial Literacy Lessons Kids Need to Learn Before Leaving Home

Because my husband is a CPA, financial lessons have started young in our house. It is very important to our family to teach our kids how to handle money wisely. That includes teaching them the important financial lessons they need to know as adults. Even before high school, financial literacy is an important topic that your kids need to understand. Here are some of the key lessons to teach them.

I received compensation and access to Beyond Personal Finance in exchange for my honest review, but all the opinions in this post are my own.

High School Financial Literacy Lessons For Teens

In order for kids to receive a solid financial education and develop personal financial literacy, there are a number of skills that they need to understand. Here are the skills you will want to include in your lesson plans.

Choosing a College

One of the most important decisions that high school students make is their choice of a college. Many factors are often at play in this decision, including location and programs that are offered. But young adults also need to consider the cost of their college education. Although higher education can give graduates a head start with their earning potential in the workplace, student loans can create financial problems for students for years after college graduation.

Choosing a Career

Young people also need to choose a college major and a career that they will pursue after their education is completed. Students often consider their passions, interests, and skills when making career choices.

But, it is important that students also consider the impact that their career choices will have on their future financial freedom. Some career choices give people more financial options in the real world than others. This is an important consideration for kids to make.

Creating a Budget

No personal finance education is complete without teaching kids how to create a budget. Budgeting is one of the most crucial skills that kids need in order to be successful as independent adults.

In addition to helping kids build healthy financial habits, creating a budget helps kids practice important skills like goal setting and delayed gratification that will help them be more successful with money long term.

Experiential learning is of the best ways for high schoolers to learn practical money skills like budgeting. A great financial literacy course will include lots of opportunities for kids to practice creating a budget using a variety of different real-life scenarios.

Saving and Investing Money

It is important that students of all ages understand the basics of money management, including how to save money for emergencies and large purchases. Before high school graduation, kids should know the basics of different types of bank accounts and savings accounts. They should also understand the importance of saving their money.

A great way to do this is to help your child set up a savings account of their own. Many financial institutions like banks and credit unions offer special savings accounts for students. These accounts can be a great way for kids to practice their financial skills and experience the benefits of saving money for themselves.

Kids should also understand the basics of different kinds of investment opportunities, including the stock market, mutual funds, and retirement savings accounts.

Using a Credit Card

Although credit cards are common in our culture, it is important that our kids understand how they work and become knowledgeable consumers. Middle school students and high school students are at the perfect age to understand how credit cards work. Their financial understanding should include how interest is calculated and how interest rates work. Kids should also understand how credit scores impact their future purchasing power.

Making a Major Purchase

A good personal finance course will also help kids understand how to make a major purchase, such as a car or a house. When kids understand how loans work, we can set them up for success in their lives as adults.

Beyond Personal Finance for Teens

What is Beyond Personal Finance?

Beyond Personal Finance is a financial literacy education course for kids in middle and high school. The course teaches the information that kids need to know to become financially literate adults. It includes lots of opportunities for kids to try out the decisions they are making in a risk-free environment.

Learn more about Beyond Personal Finance by checking out these FAQs.

About the Author

Beyond Personal Finance was created by Charla McKinley. She is a CPA with over 25 years of experience, and she is also a homeschool mom of 2. Called the Artisan of Adulting, Charla created this course to give teens the opportunity to understand and practice important financial decisions without the financial consequences that come from making those decisions in real life.

Class options

Beyond Personal Finance is available as either a self-paced class or a live course offered in person or on Zoom.

Families who purchase Beyond Personal Finance classes will receive a beautiful full-color workbook. They will also receive access to student and teacher portals online with videos, assignments, helpful links, and resources to complete the course.

Learn more about the self paced class and enroll here!

Using Beyond Personal Finance for a Group

Although homeschool families can get a lot of benefits from using Beyond Personal Finance on their own, the curriculum is even more powerful when studied in a group. Beyond Personal Finance offers group options that are perfect for a small study group or a homeschool co-op.

Beyond Personal Finance provides teacher guides and a teacher portal that make it easy to teach the curriculum in a group setting. Since this is a video-based curriculum, all the teacher needs to do is play the videos and check the students’ work. Each student will get a workbook and access to a student portal when they participate in the group curriculum.

One of the biggest benefits of using this financial literacy curriculum in a group setting is that the students can learn from each other. They can discuss their choices and the impact that these choices have on their financial situation.

As kids discuss what they are learning with their group they will begin to learn from each other’s choices in addition to their own. This additional learning makes the curriculum even more powerful.

Learn more about hosting a group class here and enroll now!

Beyond Personal Finance for High School Financial Literacy

My family had the opportunity to try out Beyond Personal Finance, and we loved the curriculum. Here are a few of my favorite things about this financial education curriculum.

Hands On Financial Experience

As a teacher with a degree in education, I love that Beyond Personal Finance gives kids the opportunity to experiment with personal finance and learn the lessons for themselves. The course does not lecture students on the importance of making good choices. Instead, students are making choices for themselves. Then they see how those choices play out over the course of the 20-year simulation that they complete in the course.

I loved watching my kids make choices and then seeing their understanding of finance grow as they saw the results of the choices they were making. The opportunity for them to see the results of those choices in a risk-free environment like the class simulations is priceless. I was literally watching my kids’ decision-making skills grow as they experimented with the choices in the lessons.

Practical Learning

Beyond Personal Finance is very practical. It focuses on the decisions that kids will need to make around money during their adult lives. My kids loved working through the course because they were able to dream about their future lives. They got to see how the kinds of choices they made would impact them financially.

My husband is a CPA, so my kids’ financial education is an important topic for him. He was impressed by the topics covered in Beyond Personal Finance. He loved the way that this curriculum goes above and beyond the financial education that many kids get in school.

We were able to have rich discussions as a family about the impact of our choices on our financial future, and these discussions were my favorite part of the course. We were excited to use the curriculum with my son and to discuss his thoughts about what his life would be like in the future.

Check out the syllabus to see what topics are covered in Beyond Personal Finance.

Makes Personal Finance Fun

The lessons in Beyond Personal Finance are clearly designed in a way that makes learning about money interesting and accessible for kids.

My son loved looking through the workbook that came with the course. The full-color charts and pictures on every page held his attention, and he wanted to read through the whole workbook for fun, just to see what else was inside.

I love that the videos were short and engaging. Charla did a great job of explaining complicated concepts using simple language that is perfect for kids in middle and high school. My son was able to watch the videos and work though the curriuclum on his own, which was great for our busy family.

Check out samples of the video lessons and workbook for the self-paced and live classes here.

Try Beyond Personal Finance for Yourself

I highly recommend Beyond Personal Finance for any homeschool family who is looking to raise kids who are financially responsible adults. This curriculum gives kids an incredible opportunity to practice making wise decisions with their money, and the decision making skills that they develop will be beneficial when it is time for them to make those decisions in their lives.

Learn more about Beyond Personal Finance and get a copy of the curriculum for yourself here.