What teen financial literacy courses miss: I built a new course and need honest testers
The kitchen counter was covered in half-eaten cereal bowls and my son’s wrinkled grocery store uniform when he slid his phone across to me last month. “My manager said I’d make $320 this week,” he said, shoving a crumpled digital pay stub in my direction. “Why does the bank say I only got $268?” I walked him through FICA, federal withholding, the tiny deduction for state disability insurance that even I forget exists most of the time. He stared at me, confused, and asked the question that got this whole project started: “Why didn’t anyone teach me this before?”
I mentioned the conversation to my sister, who teaches 11th grade at the local public high school. She laughed and said the state requires one semester of personal finance, but the textbook their district can afford is 12 years old. The first unit is on how to write a paper check. Most of her students have never seen a check, let alone written one. They spend a week on compound interest, but never get around to talking about why your first summer job takes so much money out of your check, or how to tell if that buy-now-pay-later option for a new hoodie is a bad idea.
I used to work as a curriculum writer for a state education department, quit when my oldest was born, so I had a little extra time on my hands this year. I started asking teens around the neighborhood what they actually wanted to know about money. Sixteen out of 18 I talked to said they’d never had anyone answer the small, immediate questions. They didn’t care about how to pick a 401(k) in 30 years. They wanted to know how to split a bill at a restaurant without awkwardness, how to save for a new phone while still having money to go to the movies with friends, what a credit score actually does for you right now, and whether you have to pay taxes on money you make reselling clothes on Depop.
That’s how this course started to come together. I spent six months putting together short modules, each 10 minutes or less, each answering one of those questions. No quizzes, no long reading assignments. Each one ends with one tiny activity you can do that week, if you want. For example, after the pay stub module, the activity is just to pull up your last pay stub and label the three biggest deductions. If you don’t have a paycheck yet, you can look at a sample one with your parents. It’s designed to fit into whatever space you have, not add another thing to your already overflowing to-do list.
Along the way, I picked up a few small lessons that any parent or teacher can use, even if you never test my course. Most of us try to teach money by giving a big lecture or opening a savings account when they’re 10 and then not talking about it again until they move out. That doesn’t work. Instead, tie any money conversation to the thing they’re already dealing with. If they’re begging for a new gaming console, talk about how much they need to save each month from their allowance to get it, and what they’re giving up by spending that money on the console instead of going out with friends. If they just got their first prom invitation, talk through the total cost – dress, tickets, dinner, photos – and how to plan for that. You don’t have to be a financial expert to do this. You just have to talk about the thing right in front of you, instead of jumping to far-off future stuff they don’t care about.
Another concrete thing that’s helped: don’t avoid the social side of money. Most courses only talk about numbers, but 90% of the money stress teens have is social. How do you say no when your friend wants to go out for an expensive dinner that you can’t afford? How do you ask your friend to pay you back for the concert ticket you bought them? I added a whole module on that, because none of the other courses I looked at covered it. As a parent, you can practice these conversations with your kid at home in two minutes. Next time you’re driving to practice, throw out a hypothetical: “If your friend asked you to Venmo them $40 for a group gift and you don’t even know the person the gift’s for, what would you say?” It doesn’t take long, and it helps them think through it before they’re stuck in the moment.
That’s why I’m looking for honest testers right now. I built this based on what I heard from my local community, but I don’t know if it works for everyone. If you’re a parent of a 13-18 year old, a teacher who works with teens, or even a teen who wants to check it out, you can test it for free. It’s all online, you can finish it in an afternoon if you want, or go through one module a week. All I ask is that you be honest with me. Tell me if a module is boring, if it doesn’t answer your question, if you wish I added something I missed. I don’t need glowing reviews to market anything right now – I need real feedback to make it better.
Right now, it’s still a work in progress. I don’t know if it will end up being free forever, or if I’ll charge a tiny amount to cover hosting costs, but all testers get free lifetime access no matter what happens. I know that talking about money with teens is awkward, and a lot of us don’t feel qualified to teach it anyway. I’m not trying to fix the entire education system with one little course. I just want to fill in some of the gaps that everyone knows are there, but no one has bothered to fix yet. We’ll see how it goes.
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