Through the financial life skills curriculum, Moneythink mentors provide students with the tools needed to achieve their personal goals and enter the real world prepared to make critical financial decisions. Whether it is saving money for college or securing enough funds to start their own business, our students work with our mentors to set financial goals and take action steps to get closer to accomplishing those goals following each lesson in our program.
What makes our personal finance curriculum unique is that we aim to get our students to recognize and apply sound personal finance practices to achieve their life-long dreams. During the ten-week program, our students gain the essential tools to set and achieve their goals by creating budgets, filling out student loan applications, learning how to use credit cards cautiously, and identifying appropriate investment opportunities.
Pop Culture Examples
We understand that teaching financial life skills to high school students, while important, can seem very theoretical, and quite frankly, boring. Our personal finance curriculum therefore comprises of relatable examples of former athletes, Hollywood celebrities, and musicians who either followed solid personal finance practices and multiplied their wealth, or chose to ignore the importance of budgeting, saving and other financial skills alike, and went bankrupt.
Examples include Russell Simmons, Oprah, and Jay-Z, all of whom chose to invest their wealth in successful business enterprises, and, conversely, Allen Iverson, Antoine Walker, and MC Hammer, all of whom went bankrupt after earning millions.
Discussion and Activities
Discussions provide students an opportunity to reflect on the presentation material, to allow them to identify knowledge gaps, and to give them a chance to ask questions. Additionally, activities designed by our mentors permit our students to practice the material we teach. Examples of activities include setting S.M.A.R.T.E.R. goals, drafting a personal budget, and filling out a loan application.