Why Most Teen Financial Literacy Doesn’t Stick (I’m Looking For Testers For My New Course)
Last month, I sat across the dinner table from my 16-year-old, wiping pasta sauce off my plate, while he stared at his bank app after his first full paycheck from bagging groceries at our town’s only supermarket. “Wait,” he said, looking up, “I worked 62 hours. Where did $178 go?” I walked him through line by line: federal tax, state tax, FICA, the small medical insurance contribution his employer takes out for part-time workers over 16. He’d never heard of any of it. When I asked what he’d learned about paychecks in school, he shrugged and said they did one 45-minute worksheet on budgeting sophomore year, printed by the health teacher who was filling in for the departed guidance counselor. That’s it.
I’m a former high school math teacher, so this gap didn’t surprise me. Over the 12 years I taught, I watched school after school cut personal finance time to make room for more test prep, or shift it to generic online modules that kids click through just to get a passing grade. I’ve texted with half a dozen current teachers in my area in the past year, and every single one says the same thing: they don’t have time to build relevant, up-to-date content, and the free stuff online is either 20 years out of date (talking about balancing paper checkbooks, which no teen does) or so focused on long-term goals like retirement that 16-year-olds tune out immediately.
Most of the paid courses aren’t much better. They’re built by 50-year-old finance guys who haven’t talked to a teen since their own kids were that age, lecturing about the dangers of lattes instead of talking about how to spot a TikTok scam, or how to handle constant Venmo requests from friends, or how to negotiate a higher hourly wage when you’re up for a promotion at your first job.
So after that dinner with my son, I started messing around, putting a course together on my porch after work, while he practiced guitar in the garage and my iced tea got warm. I built it around the stuff teens actually deal with right now, not the stuff they’ll deal with in 40 years. One lesson walks them through pulling up their own bank statement and circling any hidden fees they didn’t notice—like that $10 ATM fee from the machine outside the gas station, or the monthly maintenance charge their bank sticks them with for not keeping a minimum balance. Another walks them through how to read their own paycheck line by line, just like I did with my son that night. Another breaks down how credit card interest actually works, using an example of $800 in concert ticket debt that a lot of teens would actually carry, not a $200,000 mortgage. I even added a short lesson on how to ask for fee waivers for college applications, which is something I never see covered anywhere, even though it saves low-income families hundreds of dollars.
I tested the first three lessons on my 17-year-old nephew last summer, sitting on his couch while he ate Cheetos. His feedback? “The tax part wasn’t as boring as I thought it would be, but cut the compound retirement interest part. I don’t care about that right now. I’ll care when I’m 30.” So I cut it, moved it to a free optional add-on at the end. That’s the kind of honest feedback I need, because I’m not a teen anymore. I don’t know what’s cringey or what’s useless. That’s why I’m looking for testers.
What I’ve learned so far, just from building this, is that the biggest mistake adults make with teen financial literacy is pushing long-term goals before kids care about the short term. A practical thing any parent can do this week, no course needed, is this: sit down with your teen for 10 minutes, ask them to pull up their bank app, and ask them to point out three charges they don’t understand. Don’t lecture them about overspending. Just answer their questions. That’s it. That small step teaches them more than any textbook worksheet. Another thing: ask them to add up how much they spent on takeout or coffee in the last month. Most teens have never done that, and it’s not to scold them—it’s to help them see where their money goes, so they can decide if that’s how they want to spend it.
Right now, the course is 80% done. I’ve adjusted it based on feedback from three small groups of local teens and teachers, but I need more honest input to get it right. I’m looking for 25 total testers: 15 parents of teens between 13 and 18, and 10 teachers or youth leaders who work with that age group. Testers get free lifetime access to the entire course, forever. All I ask is that after each 15-20 minute lesson, you or your teen fill out a 2-question Google Form that takes less than two minutes: what was useful, and what was a waste of time. No sugarcoating needed. If your teen thinks the whole thing is cringey, that’s just as helpful as saying it’s great.
I don’t think any course can teach teens to never make a money mistake. I know my son will probably overspend on concert tickets this summer and forget to save for his oil changes, even after he goes through the lessons. Making mistakes is part of learning. But right now, most teens leave high school without ever having talked through the basic stuff that hits them the second they turn 18: credit card offers, student loan interest, checking account fees, paycheck taxes. That’s the gap I’m trying to fill, but I can’t do it without honest feedback from people who actually use it.
I don’t have all the answers yet, and the course will probably keep changing even after it launches, based on what teens and parents say they need. If you’re interested in testing, drop a comment below or send an email to the address in my bio. If you’re not, that small 10-minute exercise I mentioned earlier? That’s more than most teens get right now, so it’s still a win.
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