Top Indications in Teaching Personal Finance for Young Adults

First, you need to understand how to present content that will interest young adults and keep them engaged in the learning process. That requires knowing the decisions this particular audience needs to make as they enter the real world.

For starters, consider that many teenagers approaching adulthood will be looking at buying a car or other vehicle to get them around. One popular workshop hones down the fine points of a vehicle purchase – from Budget Before Buying, to aligning a vehicle loan with personal finance goals, to loan applications, to price negotiation, through finding auto insurance and meeting additional expenses for fuel, maintenance, and parking.

Another well-received topic for young adults would be moving away from home. Millennials have often been called the “boomerang generation,” so clearly people reaching the age of maturation would benefit from learning skills such as renting a place, showing accountability to property owners, outlining the expenses of living on one’s own, and budgeting to meet those expenses.

Strategizing how to pay for ongoing education is another content area young adults like. A personal finance course for college students that works will help them choose viable methods to fund higher education. Besides getting student loans, they can explore other options like grant and scholarship funding; and assessing the return on investment (ROI) of an educational pathway can help them decide which school and major to select.

Young adults are motivated to learn about money by all the influencers that have had impact on their financial situations, behaviors, and sentiments. We’ve identified the five top facets of motivation that should guide personal finance 101 for young adults.

1) Their parents’ situations. Children don’t choose the family into which they’re born, but the financial conditions within that family have significance for each child’s personal finances down the road. Although it’s possible for kids to become more financially secure than their parents were, it’s not easy.

2) Their behavioral tendencies. By the time they’re young adults, people have already solidified a lot of their money behaviors. How they spend, save, and make decisions about money is molded by a host of influences like advertising, their friends, and their geographic location.

3) Their relationships with money. Each individual has his or her own attitudinal and emotional reaction to money. Personal finance for young adults should address these sentiments by taking care to help them form positive relationships with money, rather than negative responses like fear and greed.

4) Their exposure to financial literacy training. Money management education is much-needed in today’s complex fiscal world, but most young adults are unlikely to have received any. Even those programs that do exist are often inferior in quality and fail to prepare youth adequately to meet their financial responsibilities. Strong financial literacy training methods for college students are in high demand.

5) Their organizational systems. Making financial mistakes can have severe consequences. That’s why it’s crucial that personal finance 101 for young adults include a component that helps them set up checking accounts, savings plans, and retirement vehicles. They also may need advice on how best to file their tax returns.

Raising financial literacy awareness for young adults will accomplish best outcomes by working to address all 5 of these key areas