Jun 21 2024 40 mins
Most of us who are only learning about finance and investing as grown ups have one very loud question in our minds:
Why don’t they teach this stuff in high school???
We had to learn about dangling participles and square dancing but not how to construct a budget or what’s being deducted from our dish washing paychecks and why?
To answer these questions and more, we invited an expert on what teens should know about finance and investing, and when they should know it. Jacqueline Collins, a Massachusetts-based high school business and finance teacher (the 2021 National Business Teacher of the Year, in fact!), told us about how to meet kids where they are, how to freak them our with our health insurance claims, and why Robin Hood and other games might teach all the wrong lessons.
Jackie takes us through a semester in the life of one of her students and answers the question: What is the one thing all teens should know about finance before leaving the house? (Edge of your seat?? Listen!)
Last thing - even if you don’t have a teen in your life, you might learn something new. Do you know what a neobank is? Neither did we!!
I’ll give you a hint: you probably use one without knowing what it is and might be trusting it a little too much. Get informed!
Teen financial literacy resources, thanks to Jackie:
- extGen Personal Finance (NGPF) Live Dashboard: https://www.ngpf.org/live-us-dashboard/
- NGPF Arcade: https://www.ngpf.org/arcade/
- Build Your Stax is in the arcade!
- If you don't have a class in school, you could try a full-service program like Your Money Vehicle (https://yourmoneyvehicle.com/) *no relation to Jedidiah Collins
Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions for Season 3 on our Ask Us page!
We have the social medias!! Here’s our Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn.
This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.