Read the wiki. You can base almost an entire course just on that.

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With Stock Market, you may want to more broadly cover investing, with other stuff like bonds, CDs, etc. as well as “what is a mutual fund” etc.

And under taxes, you probably already have this covered but please make sure they understand tax brackets! SO many adults don’t even get this concept.

How are "Employment", "Loans", "Starting a Family" and "Stock Market" each a singular topic???? especially when compared to things like "Debit Cards"?

Not sure if this would be a full lesson but something along the lines of scams to look out for, how to protect identity and credit freezing, what to do if something happens, why co signing and loaning money can be an issue. I assume those would be in each category but could be a great reminder towards the end after all lessons have been taught. Negotiating salary and prices could also be a great lesson.

Writing checks

Tax withholding

Estate planning

Marriage impacts (legal and financial)

Inflation

Fixed income/bonds

Housing

Time value of money

1099 vs employee

Dependency (taxes vs fafsa)

Employee benefits

Market timing

Some of these may be subtopics you already have

When you do Budgeting...teach a couple variations...including zero based budgeting and envelope style...and how the opportunity costs when you plan you dollars help improve decision making. Include the idea of sinking funds...budgeting for irregular but known expenses.

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Yes, I have done that. Now, how much they retain afterwards is on them.

I even had them make a spreadsheet that calculates how much Federal Income & FICA they would have to pay. I even included the SS cap and Medicare "bump".

Thanks.

Thanks.

Sometimes you got to keep it simple. Do a few examples of the rule of 72 to show the power of compounding interest

> How are "Employment", "Loans", "Starting a Family" and "Stock Market" each a singular topic???? especially when compared to things like "Debit Cards"?

What "Employment" covered:
Classification (W2, 1099, etc.)
Salary vs Hourly
Perks & Benefits (PTO, Retirement match, insurance, etc.)
Considerations (Stability/Raises/etc.)
Salary vs Gross via deductions
Job Stats (median income national/local, most in-demand, etc.)
And more

Also, it is a remedial course, so can't go to extreme & in-depth with many topics (some of these 18yr olds can't even multiply by 10).

Alloting some funds for enjoyment and reward for hard work to avoid burnout and keep morale up. Recognizing that caring for ones mental health is part of staying healthy and productive.

Time value of money Return on investment (& other metrics)

Good for you taking on this class! We need more teachers like this. I am a former financial literacy teacher and found using this site to be the most helpful for all my needs:

https://www.ngpf.org/math/

You will find units, curriculum, projects, assessments, lessons, support groups, and much more for everything you need! I hope that helps.

Not to mention, this is all for free. NFPF is a non-profit organization. They also offer trainings for teachers.

Scams

How health insurance works

How predatory loans work

A general 'how to evaluate info sources for credibility' lesson

> can’t even multiply by 10

I’m sorry what

For a math-based financial planning course--retirement planning with Monte Carlo simulation, assumptions of a Monte Carlo model, reasonability of MC assumptions, Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, impacts of different distributional assumptions and its impact on projected time to retirement.

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For a more advanced class--GARCH methods for managing volatility with extensions to Black-Scholes, using derivatives to hedge tail risk, combining tail risk discussions with scenarios from earlier discussions on Monte Carlo.

Compound interest - how it works both for and against you

That is so awesome. I wish I’d had your class in school!

Clark Howard always says when you get a windfall, use 90% of it for bills/saving/practical stuff and 10% for something fun. Being responsible is very important, but enjoying life is too.

Add a sub lesson on "why you shouldn't cosign on your friends car" and other bad moves to look out for.

Accrued Interest Percentage gain and loss. Risk and reward.

Please tell me you have a "your company doesn't love you" lessons in here.

Company loyalty is rarely a sound investment and sticking around for things that don't appear is a huge financial life mistake. Looking at 10% raises of a job hop vs inflation defeated 3% raises.

Climbing the ladder looks very different than it did back in the day and a lot of folks don't see that. There is nothing wrong job hopping (1+ year in each) in your first 5-7 years of a career and you can make huge leaps in the early career.

Something I feel is poorly understood is the rate of doubling at different percentage growth rates and real vs. nominal growth. 3% will double in ~24 years, 7% in ~10 years, 10% in 7 years, etc. My mother was so happy to lock in a 3% lifetime annuity since it was "guaranteed", while we had 3.8% inflation average over the last 100 years - it still hurts.

I'd also recommend going over what an amortization schedule schedule is specifically in regards to a mortgage, to see the total cost of a loan vs. just the principal.

Whatever you do, KISS (keep it simple, st****).

POV: my oldest last year signed up for a PF course he was looking forward to. Things to get him started as an adult. What he got was what a lot of people here are suggesting...heavy on math and topics irrelevant to a teen-early 20s. He wanted to know about bank accounts, budget, buying a car, etc. What he got was regressions, statistics, etc w/ a bit of stock picking (no mutual funds allowed!), etc.

Be practical, easy and know that they won't retain a lot of it. Teach how to FIND the info they'll need when they need it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/23/more-states-are-forcing-students-study-personal-finance-its-waste-time/

FWIW, son grew so frustrated w/ the class, he dropped it after first semester.

I wish we had this class back in high school. I might add a medical/health insurance/emergency section. But this might be more of a life skill versus personal finance. I have met so many patients that had no clue what their health insurance covered or what their deductible is. They chose the plan because it's cheap or its a group plan through their work and they assume it's a good one. So many patients complain and throw fits and argue when they have an 'out of pocket' cost that they cant pay or afford. They're the ones that chose the plan, not us. We just verify the benefits. What the insurance doesn't cover falls on the patient. Unless you have dual coverage. Even then, costs may not be covered 100%.

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interest. Deferred Vs. No interest.

Living on your own - how to split rent/utilities/ shared cost between roommates/significant other

I taught a similar course to HS juniors and seniors and we went over why opening a bank account is better than cashing at those “cash checks” places

Home buying vs renting

Condos vs House vs Other

FIRE

Grocery shopping/meal planning

I would do a few longitudinal concepts that tie a number of the above components together. For instance:

• what is compounding and how does it work. talk about how a little investing now makes a big difference in decades.
• why is it important to save for retirement? detail a situation where a student makes (say) 80k/year and saves nothing for retirement and then gets to retirement age (at whatever age your students would be eligible) and show how much they would get from SS. likely much less then what they were making. then detail what an IRA is and the value of compounding over decades. this also ties in the stock market concept (equities and bonds)
• doing your own taxes. work through how taxes work for simple w-2 income and various income levels. standard deduction and what it means. then apply this concept to taking a distribution from your IRA when retired-- key point is that tax planning is important.
• health care. why its important and consequences if you don't have it. when its provided by an employer, obama care, medicare
• EDIT added: congressional spending versus the national debt. this will be in the news. the key here is that increasing the national debt limit doesn't increase spending, it just allows the government the ability to fulfill the obligations congress has already authorized via legislation on spending. mention that most countries don't have this debt limit brick wall that we have to deal with every couple of years

Definitely going over the difference between W-2 employees and 1099 employees. A lot of people are doing side hustles like door dash and uber, but don't understand how the taxes work on those 1099 jobs. They end up in a mess come tax season.

Maybe a lesson on cost of making just one meal. Last summer I sent each one of my 14 year old twins to the grocery store with $25.00 and ask them to buy food to prepare a meal for our family of 4 to eat that night. They had to come up with a meal in their head, find the ingredients and do the math to make sure they stayed in the $25.00 budget including any taxes. They both came home stating that was really hard to figure out what made a good meal and what food actually costs just for 1 meal for a family of 4. We had pasta with garlic bread and salad for one meal and the other did tacos/quesadillas with spanish rice. It was a very good learning lesson for them, especially when they complain that I didn't get something they wanted at the store when I shop.

Budgeting.

Saving vs paying back loans

The value of having cash as in always being liquid.

A useful exercise would be to have students calculate what they should pay in taxes based on a imaginary situation. And then make a budget.

I know you came for your own question, but since I got you here, any recommended reading for someone who lives in the US and really needs to learn the basics?

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The power of compound interest, how it can work for you and against you (rule of 72 for bonus points)

I love this!

Two topics

• Amortization schedules
  • cost of a loan
  • comparing loans
• Insurance
  • levels of car insurance
  • renter's insurance
  • do you need (term) life?

These all sound like great topics I guess maybe figure out the spacing To fit the time

Agree, sometimes it's better to go more in depth on a topic than it is to touch on a lot of finance topics. Budgeting is a foundation skill, and different techniques work for different people, esp if any of the students are ADHD. Spend plenty of time on this topic.

I’m also in financial education. This about covers much of what we do. One of our more popular classes is “psychology of spending” lots of good data on needs/wants, and defensive shopping tips out there to share.

I think lessons on how taxes and deductions affect income. Like I still can’t figure out how to fill a W-4 and dial that in.

How about ‘keeping up with the Jones’s?’

In today’s social media society- kids are exposed ALL the time to lavish vacations, fancy cars, and ‘little work’ careers. What they often don’t realize is that it’s usually a facade- and that many of those people are living paycheck to paycheck. Maybe show some real life examples of middle class families that got out of control with financing toys and wants… and then ended up in dire situations.

I honestly don’t think that even many adults I know realize that not everyone needs or has the latest iPhone, fancy car or other… and that these are indeed wants and not needs.

FAFSA bonds and the difference between types of bonds Withholding on paychecks and how to calculate how much withholding you should have.

For budgeting, the idea that if you have a budget but don’t follow it, you are almost worse off. Be reasonable in what you budget.

IRAs and 401k - what is the difference. Also show them how much saving for retirement when you are young is so much more efficient than as you get older.

Social Security benefits Medicaid benefits Medicare benefits Unemployment benefits Annuities Bonds Incomes by career, education-level, HCOL vs LCOL areas Resumes & Resume building Product warranties Insurance types Rent vs Own Home ownership Being “under-water” on assets

> Maybe show some real life examples of middle class families that got out of control with financing toys and wants… and then ended up in dire situations.

I showed a few videos of Caleb Hammer on YouTube, where he does financial audits on others. One was a married man where him and his wife combined made >$200k, yet he owed I think $40k in back taxes; another was a 24yr old entrepreneur who was living paycheck to paycheck (even after his father being his landlord and giving him a steal on rent).

Health insurance, life insurance

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Buying a house, I teach stocks and that takes a while, impact of going into debt, how to get out of debt

Credit card debt - show what happens when you only pay the minimum.

Mutual fund fees, AUM fees, sales loads - what happens to investments when there is a 1% fee associated with the investments.

Why whole life policies don't make sense.

What happens when you start investing at age 22 vs. age 35.

Health insurance, why it's important to have it.

I would add to save/invest at least half of every raise.

I would also talk about the importance of an emergency fund and discuss what constitutes an emergency.

Self employment/what to charge per hour for services, why dropshipping/financial gurus are a scam, bad tiktok advice scams, etc

Do not teach options. Or if you so do not say anything good about them

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> why dropshipping/financial gurus are a scam

I don't know if he was joking, but one of my students said they'll make a living drop-shipping and do organic marketing thru TikTok to get his links out.

It's bad, and this is a normal/upper income area (nearly every kid has AirPods, some have brand new cars). I can't imagine low-income where it's even worse.

Monte-Carlo is actually in my text; however my course is a remedial one, so I'd only do that if I wanted to torture them.

Dang that’s tragic! I was just recently talking to my nephew (15) and his stepmom (who works some kind of government job but not a teacher) and they were saying how teachers are quitting left and right, moving to different states for other teaching jobs or just switching careers altogether because of how hard it’s getting to teach the kids. I’m thankful that I’m in a position so that my son can be homeschooled by my wife

That's very interesting, because my students say the same thing. (I'm a design teacher, not a math teacher, but it still gets discussed) These online gurus are convincing thousands of teens that they're going to do this and teens are getting fed into a sales funnel of courses and books that will leave them broke. Your student doesn't understand margins, market saturation, first mover advantage, or any of the reasons why there is no more money left to be made in dropshipping.

Had them do an investing/retirement spreadsheet generating a chart comparing 2 scenarios (differences in years invested, annual contributions, and yearly gains).

>What he got was regressions, statistics, etc w/ a bit of stock picking (no mutual funds allowed!), etc.

Had to teach regressions & some stats too. For my stock project I used MarketWatch’s virtual game (real-time stocks, but fake money, and tracks it all for them), not only did it allow funds but even limit/stop orders (none of my students used that feature though).

I did cover co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles, HMO vs PPO, etc.

However, these kids don’t even remember what they had for dinner last night.

The Wiki of this sub has a lot of good info.

I've checked it, it's fine, but I meant something more explanatory. And not so much a to-do list

the index card by Olen and Pollack Is a great explanation of the basics!