Five Good Resources for Personal Finance Lessons

Yesterday, I shared a nice collection of personal finance lesson activities called Money As You Grow. Reviewing Money As You Grow prompted me to pull up some of my other resources for personal finance lessons. Here are five of my favorite personal finance lesson resources that I pulled from dozens of economics resources in my archives.

Money 101 is a free resource from Practical Money Skills for Life. Money 101 is available as a PPT file with an accompanying workbook (PDF download). The presentation and workbook is designed for young people who are just beginning to take responsibility for paying bills and managing their finances. In Money 101 students learn about things like how to manage a checkbook and how to wisely use credit. Money 101 is available on the Practical Money Skills for Life free materials page. While the presentation and workbook are good on their own and may be fine as stand-alone resources, I would encourage using them as part of a larger lesson on personal finance.

Mint.com offers five dozen videos about various aspects of personal finance. While many of them are about using Mint's services to manage your finances there are some good videos that have a more general appeal. One of those videos that is appropriate for a high school level economics lesson is Quest for Credit.


The Atlantic's series Economics In Plain English is a good resource for social studies teachers to bookmark and share with their students. One of the new additions to the series is What Is Money? What Is Money? uses the fun scenario of trying to deposit a banana into a bank to explain the basic purpose and function of money. The video is embedded below.




Through a post on the Man vs. Debt Facebook page I found this simple graphic depicting how many hours per week it would take to pay for a two bedroom apartment in each of the continental U.S. states.

The graphic would go well with my hands-on game Life on Minimum Wage.

The purpose of Life on Minimum Wage is for students to recognize how difficult it is to save money when your only job(s) pay minimum wage without benefits. To win (prize not determined yet) at Life on Minimum Wage the students have to reach five financial goals that they select. To earn money the students have to complete the tasks of their assigned jobs. The students then have to pay required bills before using money for their selected financial goals. As the game progresses students will be issued "surprise" cards which require them to spend money on things like speeding tickets, trips to a health clinic, and increases in rent.

A PDF of the lesson can be downloaded here.