Description
Over the course of the semester, high school level homeschool students create a young adult budget based on real inputs and personal decisions about how they want to live in the future. An overview of the basics of earning, saving and managing money and risk. Wages, taxes, budgeting for daily living as well as debt, credit and compounding interest are all explored. This secular and inclusive Personal Finance course is offered in Naperville for homeschoolers as a high school level half year hybrid course with in-person class meetings once/week for 3 hours with additional work done between classes qualifying for 0.5 transcriptable elective credit.
Personal Finance
In-person class Fridays, 9:00-11:55 am with an additional approximately 1 hour of work to be done between classes.
Registration is for Spring 2024 semester-long course (16 weeks)
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The key concepts for Personal Finance are:
- Make decisions about money with research, forethought and planning for financial stability
- Understand and use tools to assist in personal budgeting, financing and accumulating wealth
- Recognize and evaluate the spending and saving/investing options to make informed decisions
- Define personal goals related to finances
- Create budgets and plans for spending and saving with an understanding of the impacts of choices within the confines of their individual circumstances
Minimum content covered in the course include:
- Money Management (goal setting, decision making, spending plan & budget, taxation, money management tips)
- Credit Concepts regarding Borrowing (application process, loans, credit cards, costs, credit score, debt, rights & responsibilities)
- Earning Power and Careers (earning potential, career plan, life stages, employee benefits, take-home pay, lifestyle)
- Saving and Investing (options, risks & rewards, time value of money, diversification)
- Banking and Credit Unions (account types, fees, service options, transaction tracking, automation, identify protection)
- Insurance (risk management, costs-claims, insurance types, coverage decisions, insurability factors)
Additional content may be covered depending on the pace of student learning and the direction their discovery moves.
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- BASIC calculator (basic functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division – nothing fancier required)
- Single subject notebook (70-100 pages) for note-taking and information
- Pocket folder for handouts and homework research
- Writing utensils
Additionally, students will need technical ability to access Zoom, Nearpod.com, Discovery Education Streaming, Study.com and Schoology.com (Schoology will require an e-mail address for student access).
At home, students will need access to the internet (home or library) to look up information, related published materials and/or videos and do work through our class learning management system. Some videos will be subscription-based and issued by illuminat-ED (all students will have accounts for Discovery Streaming and Study.com for additional video support). Some videos will be freely available.
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[rara_toggle title=”Time Required Outside of Class and Transcriptable Time” status=”close”]Approximately 0.5 to 1 hour/week homework, but not every week.
Combined with our live class time, this is a total of 4 hours/week for a course total of 64 hours. This equates to one half high school credit using the Carnegie unit methodology.
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Live class time will assume students have done their offline work and fieldwork (if any). We will be collaboratively sharing at-home work/results and discussing results in the context of the current topic in addition to doing practical activities
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[rara_toggle title=”Is This Level a Good Fit for My Child?” status=”close”]This is a teen-oriented high school course.
There is some math that requires at least strong multiplication and division skills that can be supported for struggling math learners if they are at least familiar, if not quick, with basic calculations. There is a STRONG decision-making component to this course. Students should feel comfortable speaking about their future although it is presented with the realities that careers are no longer a “pick it and stick with it” endeavor for their generation. We will discuss how to approach this for stability.
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