Personal Finance Topics for High School Students: A Guide

How has our guide helped somebody in a real-world example? Let’s now turn to an example of when a professional successfully used our personal finance topics for high school students in their own job:

Isaiah works as a high school government teacher, and he currently has 47 12th graders under his instruction. As his students were repeatedly asking him about student loans and savings accounts, he decided to help them all by providing them with some personal finance topics for high school students. He was confident in his own personal knowledge on the topic, but he didn’t have much experience in teaching money management. That’s the reason he came to the realization he would need external help to teach this critical information.

He passed around a basic survey with multiple choice questions at the end of his classes one day, which made him realize that the majority of these kids he was concerned about had very little personal finance topic knowledge at all. That’s why they truly needed financial literacy topics for college students.

Isaiah’s initial idea for these financial literacy topics for high school students was to simply do some after-school sessions himself. This, however, seemed overwhelming. For now, he just wanted them to learn the basics. It wouldn’t be for several months that he would expect them to be proficient in the topic.

Designing Financial Literacy Topics for High School Students

At that point in time, Isaiah already had an idea of what he wanted to do in both the short term and the long term. The following move would be to plan it: what format should he go with? What pace should he set the program at? He decided that this is something best learned in small chunks, so an in person course would be the best solution.  His first step was to create a description for his personal finance course then he proceeded to find lessons that matched.

Isaiah realized that his concept for these personal finance topics for high school students was still a little too wide, especially considering how he wants to focus on just getting started. He wasn’t exactly certain on how to teach personal finance to high school students; but he knew that he needed to narrow the focus of the program.  So he decided to make the first portion of the program all about the types of student loans there are.

Timing it Well

These kids all had wild schedules, of which few overlapped. They would never be able to all be in one place at once, even for a review. That’s why he realized that modular, flexible financial literacy topics for high school students would be best – and would enable them to absorb this vital information on their own time.

In that moment, what he needed was help – assistance from someone who was skilled in building personal finance topics for high school students that are fun while still being engaging. Fortunately, he successfully partnered with a Certified Financial Education Instructor from the National Financial Educators Council that was an expert at creating enjoyable content that was still effective. With a seasoned professional’s help with his financial literacy topics for college students, he was much more confident.

Following Through

Out of the 47 tutors who participated in his course, 44 of them (94%) completed the whole program. After the course was over, all those who reached the end were asked to fill out a survey, and 100% of those particular students reported that their financial knowledge grew “significantly” as a result of participating in Isaiah’s program.