This post highlights personal finance program at high schools that been featured in the news recently:

• Marion High School to require a year of personal finance as graduation requirement (Marion County Record):

“Marion High School will no longer be one of those schools, starting with the class of 2017.  At its monthly meeting Monday, the USD 408 Board of Education voted to make a year of personal finance credit a requirement for graduation.”

• Colorado high schoolers playing the Stock Market Challenge (Denver Post):

“Broker! Broker! Broker! Minutes after the opening bell, Elijah Reed was ready to make a trade. Sell off 500 shares in this company, he instructed, the manic din of the trading floor growing by the second. His business partners, meanwhile, were already hunting their next move, their eyes glued to the giant stock board rising above the lobby of the Cable Center.”

• Lanphier High School (Illinois) Personal Finance teacher, David Roberts, believes senior year critical time to reach students (State Journal Register):

David Roberts, a consumer education teacher at Lanphier High School, said a senior finance class would help students prepare for the future, and help with financial knowledge students are currently using.  “Many older students are working, buying cars or paying for insurance, trying to save for college, etc., so understand the importance,” he said in an email.

• Washington High School students (Indiana) learning personal finance from guest instructors (Times Herald Online):

Washington High School seniors were engaged in a pair of lessons Wednesday morning that will prepare them for the present and the future. The topic of the discussions centered around the Junior Achievement Personal Finance Program.

“We’ve talked about budgeting, savings, paying yourself first, interest, good interest, bad interest, lending practices, things of that nature,” guest speaker Erich Felkner said. “Personal finance is going to be around for your entire life. You have to learn how to save your money and pay your bills, so I think it’s important for everybody to know.”

• Saratoga (CA) high school student writes book about investing (San Jose Mercury News):

While some kids are known to click out of the Facebook tab on their browser as soon as they hear their parents approaching their room, Mahir Jethanandani was doing the opposite for a while. He was switching out of a Word document and going onto the social networking site to hide what he was really working on: a book on investment.

He initially kept it a secret, he said, to ward off outside influences, but eventually he revealed his secret project to his parents and went on to publish his book, titled “The Immaculate Investor,” through Amazon on Oct. 31.

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.