Cluster Specialist
Business Management & Administration
Finance
If I could
teach my seven and nine year-old girls something, it would be a greater
understanding of money. While they
aren’t teenagers, they would spend money
like teenagers. We implemented the Dave
Ramsey soup cans of “save” “give” and “spend”, but that wasn’t capturing their
attentions. Then, we took them to the
bank and they opened savings accounts and received their very own debit cards
for deposit and withdrawals only. As you can imagine, we now are scouring two
messy bedrooms for those cards.
If you think
about it, my girls aren’t much different than our teenager students. Most of them want to spend money, may lose
interest in saving money, and often lose track of money. Where does a CTE teacher begin to wade
through all of the available information out there to implement some practical
information about personal finances?
I suggest
starting with “The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy” http://www.jumpstart.org. The emphasis is from
pre-kindergarten through college age, and promotes lifelong financial
success. This site has a “rich” list of
free resources which include single lessons and learning games as well as
comprehensive courses. They show you the
National and State Standards in K-12 Personal Finance Education. They have also listed their best practices
for any teacher who would like to submit for publication.
The best
tool for a teacher to implement in the classroom is their “Reality Check”.
While it
isn’t a precise budgeting tool, it will give students (especially your seniors)
a valid assessment of what it will cost to live the life they want. Have students go online, fill it out and look
at their reality check. They will be
told what their average weekly salary needs to be after taxes, given some jobs
that make that average salary, and then given the average salary earned
according to degree of education achieved.
To keep the
conversation going, ask the following questions:
1) By a show of hands, how many of you
need to make more money?
2) How many of you need to reevaluate
your luxury expenses? (i.e. haircuts, manicures, eating out)
3) What are some other luxury expenses
that you don’t feel you can live without? (answers will be type of car,
clothing, happy hours, hair color treatments, etc.)
4) If you have a luxury item that you
refuse to lose, are you a bad person?
What are your guidelines for luxury spending?
5) How, if at all, have your plans for
your future changed based on this reality check?
I hope you
will find this reality check fun and useful.
Retrieved from May 14, 2001, from http://www.jumpstart.org/reality-check.html
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