Personal finance is rarely taught in classroom curriculum, but it is one of the most important life lessons we can learn. Being financially educated at a young age can help us navigate important decisions in our adult lives. As a Credit Union, part of our vision is to educate our community about personal finance topics. Understanding the foundation of saving, investing, and wants versus needs will inform spending habits for years to come.
HUECU is glad to provide engaging tools for parents, teachers, or caregivers to use to encourage children’s financial education. While in-person classes and daycares are done for this academic year, we know many of you still want your children to expand their knowledge.
Below are resources we’ve gathered to help families with children and teens.
Interested in personal finance topics for adults? Please visit www.huecu.org/workshops or browse our blog for topics that may interest you.
Resources for Children:
- These lesson plans were created by HUECU to help families learn money basics together. These plans include books to read, activities for children to complete, and some games to play.
- These learning modules from The Mint help children understand earning, spending, saving, and giving while keeping them engaged through stories and fund games.
- Watch these videos from BrainPop and BrainPop Jr. to learn more about the foundations of budgeting, taxes, and needs vs. wants.
- For grades 3-5, through a story and activities, the Louis Federal Reserve student workbook introduces students to economic concepts such as saving, spending, budgeting, wants, goods, services and opportunity cost.
- SageVest Kids has resources grouped by age beginning with age 3 and working up to teens. Their resources range from recommended books to teach financial basics all the way to advice for talking with teens about big family purchases.
- Great Western Bank created a full packet of activities for financial literacy month that give kids the opportunity to be creative while learning about money
Resources for Teens:
- For High School students, Next Gen Personal Finance has created an entire arcade of games for students to practice good money decision making in budgeting, college expenses, and credit cards.
- Learning modules from The Mint walk teens through new concepts like investing, budgeting, and saving money.
- Teens can take these quizzes to learn how much they know about the world of finance and investing.
- GreenPath Financial Wellness has a full course with information on buying a car.
- If teens are interested in learning more about college choice and financing options, this college cost calculator can help.
We hope you are able to take advantage of these resources to begin instilling good personal finance skills in all of your family members. If there are any resources your family loves, but aren’t included on this list, please let us know!