An 8-Step Guide for Finding Financial Literacy Topics

Download your copy of the Financial Literacy Framework & Standards that outlines essential financial literacy topics.

Allison is the lead residential advisor to 42 different resident hall assistants at a university. The whole group was made up of current college students. Many of them had repeatedly asked her for personal finance advice, she wanted to try and help them by providing them with some basic financial literacy topics. The only issue was that she didn’t really even know where to begin. She already had a grasp of the topic herself, but she didn’t feel qualified to build financial literacy curriculum and presentation resources. That’s why she decided she would need to ask for external help to best convey such important material.

Thanks to a series of casual conversations with her volunteers, she came to the realization that most of them needed to establish a basic level of knowledge in this topic. – so, an easy-to-digest source of reliable information would be best initial stepping stone.

Her initial idea in this endeavor she decided to embark upon was to go at it alone – to help this group acquire money management knowledge via a series of workshops she would hold. Allison hoped to cover the basics quickly, so she decided to begin with the fundamentals. Down the road, however, her plan was to make them all confident when it comes to financial literacy topics.

Since Allison had already chosen his near-term ideas and had a vision for the future, her next move would be to decide how to provide the group with this critical material. What about the delivery method? And the learning pace? The group all had different, mismatched schedules that meant nobody’s availability was the same. For this reason, she decided that an internet-based course would be best – so the group could learn on their own time.

What she had to do after that was to narrow down the specific areas of focus for his course. Since everyone in the group was basically a beginner in this topic, she chose to provide them with a general overview of basic financial literacy topics.

What Allison needed was a choice of financial literacy rubric that could tackle these subjects using activities that are both engaging and interactive, and one that could accommodate everyone’s incompatible schedules. That’s why she decided to go with a flexible, modular type of program.

Allison felt like she could certainly handle designing the financial literacy topics herself, but she was nervous that the group wouldn’t find it entertaining enough. In order to make sure the course was the best it could be, she decided to contact a NFEC Certified Educator for some help with the “fun” part. With an experienced expert’s help, she felt much more confident.