Personal finance

What it is

What to do with money once you have it, and what it costs to get money you do not have yet.

This is the pathway most people mean by "financial literacy", and on its own it is not enough — which is the whole point of there being more than one.

Why it matters, by grade band

K–2

Spending it now and having it later are the same decision, made once. That is the entire idea, and it is enough at six.

3–5

A plan made before the money arrives works better than a decision made after it does.

6–8

A paycheck is not what you earned. Deductions are real, they have names, and they can be found on the stub.

9–12

Borrowing has a price expressed as a rate, insurance is a trade of a small certain loss against a large uncertain one, and time is the variable that dominates both.

What a student actually does

• ▸Earns a simulated wage on a schedule and lives on it, including the weeks it does not stretch.
• ▸Reads their own pay stub and accounts for the difference between gross and net.
• ▸Builds an emergency fund, and then gets hit with something unexpected — the students who have one absorb it, the students who do not go negative, in the same room on the same day.
• ▸Runs a loan to term and sees the total paid against the amount borrowed.

What they can do afterward

• ▸Read a pay stub and explain every line on it.
• ▸Build a budget from an actual income rather than an imagined one, and know what to cut first.
• ▸Compare two credit offers by total cost rather than by monthly payment.
• ▸Explain, from having felt it, why the emergency fund is the first thing rather than the last.