Why Teens Don’t Learn Real-World Financial Skills: I Built A New Course Looking For Honest Testers
Last month, I sat across from my 16-year-old niece Lila at my kitchen table, her first coffee shop paycheck printed out in front of her, a crumpled blueberry Pop-Tart next to her open phone. She’d been counting the numbers under her breath for five minutes when she looked up, confused. “I worked 10 hours at $18 an hour. That should be $180. Why do I only get $139 deposited? Who is FICA and why did they take $27?” I walked her through taxes and Medicare, and when we finished, she asked why no one had ever told her this. Her high school’s required personal finance unit was a 20-year-old video on saving for a house that the teacher played on a rainy day before spring break. That was the extent of it.
I’ve been teaching 10th and 11th grade in a public high school outside Columbus for seven years, and this conversation isn’t unusual. Last year, I surveyed 127 of my students about money: 82% couldn’t name two deductions on a pay stub, 76% didn’t know what an APR is, and 90% said they’d never had a conversation at school about how to handle buy now, pay later plans, which almost half of them had used to buy clothes or sneakers. Most existing financial literacy materials are out of touch: they talk about balancing checkbooks no one uses, focus on retirement savings that feel a million years away to a 16-year-old, and ignore all the actual money situations teens deal with every week.
A year and a half ago, I started jotting down lessons after school, based on the questions kids actually asked me between classes or after group work. My first draft was 12 long units, packed with information I thought they should know. When I asked three after-school kids to look it over, they said it felt just like any other homework—boring, and totally disconnected from the stuff they cared about. So I scrapped half of it. I cut the 40-minute lesson on long-term stock investing and added a 15-minute lesson on how to get your friend to pay you back on Venmo without ruining your friendship, and how to spot a fake seller scam when you’re buying concert tickets off Instagram. I cut the chapter on writing checks and added a lesson on what to do if you overdraw your debit card, what fees you’ll pay, and how to get one waived if it’s your first time. I made every lesson 10 to 15 minutes long, with one tiny activity that takes another 10 minutes to complete that week, no big essays or tests.
A lot of parents tell me they feel like they should be the one teaching this, and that makes sense. But most of us don’t follow through. I’ve talked to dozens of parents who say they’re awkward talking about money, or they don’t have time to break it down step by step, or they don’t even understand the new stuff teens are dealing with. If you’re a parent who’s been meaning to teach your teen basic money skills, there’s one small thing you can do this week that takes 10 minutes, no preparation needed: if your teen has a part-time job, ask them to pull up their latest pay stub on their phone, and go through each line item together. You don’t have to be an expert; just look it up together if you don’t know what something means. If they don’t work, pull up one of your own pay stubs, black out your actual income, and walk through the same thing. It’s way more useful than any textbook lesson I’ve ever seen. Another quick, concrete step: next time your teen wants to buy something over $100 with buy now, pay later, sit down and add up the total cost including any late fees, compared to saving up for a month to buy it outright. Most teens don’t realize those “no interest” plans can add 20% or more to the cost if you miss a payment.
Right now, I have the full 8-lesson course put together, and I’m at the point where I need more than just feedback from the kids I teach at my own school. I need honest testers. I’m not selling anything right now, I don’t have a price tag locked in, I just want to know what works and what doesn’t. I’m looking for three groups of people: parents of teens between 13 and 18, high school teachers who want to use it in their classroom or advisory period, and even teens who want to go through it themselves. All testers get the full course for free, forever. All I ask is that you fill out a 2-minute anonymous survey after each lesson telling me what was boring, what was confusing, what was missing, or what was actually useful. I don’t need people to sugarcoat it. If a lesson is useless, tell me. If it’s too easy or too hard, tell me. That’s the only way I can make it something that actually works for kids.
Last week, I had my 17-year-old nephew go through the first three lessons. He told me the Venmo scam lesson was really helpful because he’d almost fallen for one two months earlier, but the lesson on opening a bank account was too slow—he’d had an account since he was 13, and he already knew all that stuff. That’s exactly the kind of feedback I need. I don’t think this course is going to fix the whole country’s financial literacy gap, or make every teen a money expert by the time they graduate. I just want to make something that meets kids where they are, instead of forcing them to learn stuff that won’t matter to them for 30 years. Right now, it’s still a work in progress. If you’re willing to give honest feedback, sign up via the link below. I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
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