Description
This high school level project-based Personal Finance course walks students through a semester of learning about (then applying) all of the things that affect money as a young adult. This secular but inclusive semester course is offered in Naperville as a HALF year/semester elective course with in-person class meetings once/week for 1.5 hour with additional work done between classes qualifying for 0.5 transcriptable elective credit.
Personal Finance
In-person class Thursday mornings, 9:30am-12:00 pm with occasional finishing up of work plus 1-2 family outings (grocery shopping and bank visit) to be done between classes.
Registration is for the Spring 2025 semester-long course (16 weeks)
The key concepts for Personal Finance are:
- Make decisions about money with research, forethought and planning for financial stability
- Understand and use tools to assist in personal budgeting, financing and accumulating wealth
- Recognize and evaluate the spending and saving/investing options to make informed decisions
- Define personal goals related to finances
- Create budgets and plans for spending and saving with an understanding of the impacts of choices within the confines of their individual circumstances
Minimum content covered in the course include:
- Money Management (goal setting, decision making, spending plan & budget, taxation, money management tips)
- Credit Concepts regarding Borrowing (application process, loans, credit cards, costs, credit score, debt, rights & responsibilities)
- Earning Power and Careers (earning potential, career plan, life stages, employee benefits, take-home pay, lifestyle)
- Saving and Investing (options, risks & rewards, time value of money, diversification)
- Banking and Credit Unions (account types, fees, service options, transaction tracking, automation, identify protection)
- Insurance (risk management, costs-claims, insurance types, coverage decisions, insurability factors)
Additional content may be covered depending on the pace of student learning and the direction their discovery moves.
- BASIC calculator (basic functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division – nothing fancier required)
- Single subject notebook (70-100 pages) for note-taking and information
- Pocket folder for handouts and homework research
- Writing utensils
Additionally, students will need technical ability to access Zoom, FlipGrid, EdPuzzle, Nearpod.com, Study.com and Canvas (our learning management system).
At home, students will need access to the internet (home or library) to look up information, related published materials and/or videos and do work through our class learning management system. Some videos will be subscription-based and issued by illuminat-ED (all students will have accounts for Discovery Streaming and Study.com for additional video support). Some videos will be freely available.
Amount of time will depend on your student’s speed/fluency with the tasks at hand and the content of the week. Unfinished work will be sent home. There are additionally two field trips students will need to do:
- Trip to go food shopping/pricing (approx. week 5-6)
- Trip to a banking institution (approx. week 6-7 in addition to our class-time field trip)
We will be collaboratively sharing individual work/results and discussing results in the context of the current topic, learning new topics, and doing practical activities
There is some math that requires at least strong multiplication and division skills that can be supported for struggling math learners if they are at least familiar, if not quick, with basic calculations. There is a STRONG decision-making component to this course. Students should feel comfortable speaking about their future although it is presented with the realities that careers are no longer a “pick it and stick with it” endeavor for their generation. We will discuss how to approach this for stability.
