Pointers for Teaching Money Management for Young Adults
Do you feel enthusiastic about presenting a program in money management for young adults? If so, you’ve reached a good informational source. On this webpage we offer some sound guidelines for choosing the right topics to make financial literacy programs for youth meaningful, and getting started toward handling the common conditions that influence young adults’ financial capability.
Money Management Subjects that Provide the Best “Bang for the Buck”
Your best bet for setting up a program in money management for young adults that gets the best “bang for your buck” is to opt for topics that have real-world applicability for young people. That means choosing such content as car-buying, how to fund college education, and how to become self-supporting and independent. For example, read this op-ed from The Chicago Tribune about how Gen Z is figuring out how to score “side hustles”.
Next, let’s break those topics down into their individual components. A car purchasing workshop could cover goal and budget development, how to approach the negotiation process, loan applications, and the hidden expenses of owning a car (e.g. gasoline, insurance, oil changes, repairs).
The class on college funding could discuss such topics as finding appropriate scholarships and applying for governmental or private foundation grants. These subjects could be useful in a personal finance course for college students also. Other components might include college budgets, figuring return on investment of education, and planning out one’s career.
Coursework aimed at teaching self-supporting skills could incorporate segments on financial goal-setting, pinpointing living expenses, budgeting, homeownership or rental application, insuring one’s property, and obtaining credit.
Providing this type of just-in-time preparation represents the best way to teach money management for young adults that has timely, real-world practicability.
Money Management for Young Adults: Focus on Easing their Struggles
Young people face certain struggles that are specific to their life stage. If programs teaching personal finance subjects for young adults focus on easing those difficulties, they will have the best chance for success. These issues occur early, even in childhood, and are interconnected.
Both one’s behavioral habits and emotions/sentiments related to money begin developing at quite a young age. Influences on these attitudes and behaviors are exerted by parents, social connections, advertisements, and the environment. Obviously, the family’s financial situation comes into play here: demographics such as income and SES, as well as the amount of money management education and practice the parents have undergone, make a substantial difference in the child’s financial future.
Further, as children mature, they themselves are subjected to different levels of money management training. It’s important to know how much financial education the audience has received prior to teaching money management for young adults. Notably, very few high schools have financial education mandates in place. Simultaneously, young adults are inundated with credit card offers and pressures to spend – meaning they are constantly tempted to misuse money. The need for top-quality methods for teaching young adults more about money has never been greater.
One powerful way to help address these influences is to ensure that young adults have the right systems in place to manage their finances. These systems should include arrangements like retirement, checking, and savings accounts; and proper use of online banking monitoring features to track their accounting.
Money Management Tips Young Adults
Many people are coming to realize just how important it is for young people to gain a solid foundation of knowledge about how to handle personal finances. But schools are unlikely to teach practical financial topics as part of their regular curriculum, and many parents feel unqualified to teach their kids about money. So where can you find money management tips for young adults?
Schools: Public schools today face budget cuts and testing requirements that limit their ability to teach financial subjects. Some high schools and community colleges do include personal finance within a larger Life Skills curriculum. But money management for young adults is unlikely to be taught comprehensively in the school setting.
Parents: Most youth do learn the bulk of their money knowledge from their parents. Much of this knowledge is picked up simply by observation. Kids notice how their parents handle money and are likely to adopt similar habits. But because few parents received a financial education when they were young, they may not know where to start teaching money topics to their children.
Financial education for young adults can be found online. Recently several home-study financial literacy products have become available that help parents teach money management. These courses give parents the basics of how to raise money-smart kids, and often the parents learn just as much as the youth.
Nonprofit Organizations: Many nonprofit groups have jumped on the opportunity to help others by teaching money management for kids. Philanthropic foundations now award grant money to fund financial literacy training for youth, empowering nonprofits to build the financial capabilities of today’s young adults.
Corporations: Private companies are beginning to comprehend the value of giving their workforce a practical financial education. Many large corporations now offer financial counseling as part of their Employee Assistance Programs, and some even provide personal finance classes to their employees.
Many resources can now be found to promote money management for teenagers and young adults. The National Financial Educators Council is a good place to start the search.