And now, Financial Literacy for the older kids

Last night’s program was definitely not as well attended as I had hoped.  I only had five middle schoolers show up – all boys which is definitely a bonus, but only five.  The show still went on and I think the boys learned a lot and still had some fun too!  This was much more in depth than the program I posted yesterday.  Set up in a PowerPoint presentation, we discussed how to earn money and I even included a table that shows how much more each level of education earns.  The kids really liked to see different types of careers and the annual salary those careers earned.  This led us to a great discussion about work/life balance as I explained that working a lot of hours works for some people while others would prefer to have more time to spend with family and friends and maybe not make as much money.  We also got to play the game, Lemonade Stand online where you purchase ingredients to make lemonade and then have a lemonade stand – your profit is dependent on the weather, your cost of lemonade, and how good it is.

After we talked about earning money, we talked about spending money.  The differences between wants and needs, tips and tricks to set goals to buy more expensive purchases and we also discussed impulse buys – things you buy, but don’t really want or need.  For this section we played The Spending Challenge where you have 16 weeks to choose how you spend your money.

We also talked about the odds of winning the lottery and how to make $1,000,000 by the time you are ready to retire.  These were the most interesting parts for the boys – they of course want to make as much money as possible in their lives.  And finally we talked briefly about debt and how in some cases debt is required for many people to attend school, buy a house, etc.  We also talked about how and when debt becomes a bad thing.  The kids were very insightful and grasped all these concepts easily.

I’ve done this program in the past and we marketed it with a duct tape wallet craft which definitely brought more kids into the program.  If I were to do it again, I definitely would bring the craft back into the program to entice more kids to come!