Beyond Personal Finance

This class allows your student to look into the future and make real life choices for his/herself. With other personal finance books/curriculum you simply learn about finance. This class will let your student live it. And isn't life a better teacher than a book? See the syllabus HERE

No! The financial concepts are written and explained so that most students and adults can understand them. The goal of this class is not to make a Financial Consultant out of your student. Rather, the goal is to open his/her eyes to the costly choices ahead of him/her and help him/her make the connection between his/her current choices and the future financial consequences.

No need to print your own materials, we have everything you need! Upon purchase, you will receive a 321 page, full-color Student Workbook to use while watching the pre-recorded teaching videos. In addition, you will receive access to a Teacher and Student Portal that contain the videos, homework links and additional guidance needed to complete the course. For a peek at the portals, click HERE.

The curriculum is designed for middle school and high school students with a working knowledge of decimals, percentages and basic algebra. An assessment to determine if your student is ready for the class is provided HERE.

Each session varies based on the content covered but the structure of each of the 20 lessons generally runs like this for the self-paced course:

• The parent/teacher has a short video (less than 5 mins) where they can hear what will be covered and supplement the learning with lessons from their own experience
• A 20-30 minute instructional video the student (and parent/teacher if applicable) watches first where the material is taught and work is explained
• Lesson choice and budget work is completed taking about 20 minutes.
• Budget work is reviewed by the parent/teacher to make sure the numbers are entered into the spreadsheet correctly (it is inevitable that the student will get the tax number wrong because it is such a large expense, they can’t believe it is real!)

Those are the official time “requirements” of the course. Based on the feedback I have heard from other families, there is lots of discussion now that the student's eyes are opened (“Wow, I never knew how much ____ cost” or “I was(n’t) able to afford _____ because I spent my money on _____ in an earlier lesson). This kind of rich discussion is often the best part for the parent/teacher.

Absolutely! As your student progresses from age 22-42 in the class, he will make many choices. And some might not be so wise 😉

There are three different options for changing his mind!

(1) If the choice results in a negative budget, he can update his choice to one that will keep his bank account positive.

(2) Further, while his choice might not result in immediate debt it might limit the amount of money he has in future lessons. In that case, he can go back to the original choice and choose again.

(3) And finally, with your 365-day access your student will have plenty of time to repeat the entire 22-42 experience again using different career and expense choices.

If only real life were this easy!

We love the electronic portal format because it allows us to update and enhance our materials constantly. Upon purchase, you will receive activation codes for the Student and Teacher portals. This unique code can be used whenever you are ready to get started. Once activated, you will have 365 days to complete the 20-lesson course. Worried that it might take you longer than 365 days to complete? We are confident that this class will not drag on like the others because your student will be eager to see what happens in his life "next". But, just in case life gets in the way, simply email us, and we will be glad to grant you an extension.

We know you are going to love this experience and have younger kids who want to do it too. That is great! You may reactivate your subscription at any time for the cost of an Additional Student, $50. All you need is the email connected to your expired subscription. The link to reactivate your subscription is HERE.

The philosophy of this class is to make the experience as true to life as possible. Therefore, we don't place a high value on the class grade but instead, use raises as a way to communicate to the students their performance in class. If a grade is required, guidance for grading the material is provided in the Teacher Portal.

Yes, debt is bad. We allow students to make the mistake of using student loan debt and car debt in their "future life" so that they can experience the pain firsthand. The hope is that they will begin to understand the long lasting effects these loans will have.

While it is true that this class is based on the wages and costs in the US, there is nothing to stop you from using numbers that are more appropriate to your situation. Our budget sheets are intentionally designed using a "free form" format giving the students freedom to use numbers that most closely represent the income and expenses they are likely to have as an adult. We encourage international students to use our cost model resources as a guide to look for similar resources in their own country.

Beyond Personal Finance counts as half a credit of Personal Finance on a high school transcript. To turn its grade into a GPA, use our free homeschool GPA calculator: it works out each letter grade from your student's scores, figures the GPA by year and for all of high school, and prints a grade record for the transcript.