Wealthy Habitat

Schools · The curriculum

The personal finance unit, lesson by lesson.

Two six week units for grades nine to twelve, twelve lessons, each twenty minutes of class: a two paragraph lesson, one practice number, one arithmetic check the page marks, one real thing to find, and prompts to talk from. Free to read and to teach from a test roster; nothing is collected from a student.

Try a class free   The lesson plans   Walk it as a student

Unit 1: Your first paycheck

  1. Lesson 1 · standards area: earning income
    What the numbers on your pay stub mean

    Your pay stub has two big numbers: what you earned, and what you got. The gap is taxes and a few other things taken out before you ever see the money.

    The check: If about 20 percent came out, roughly what did you take home?

  2. Lesson 2 · standards area: saving
    The first hundred dollars you never see

    The easiest money to save is money you never see. If a little comes out of each paycheck before it reaches you, you will not miss it, and it grows while you are busy living..

    The check: If you get paid twice a month, how much is that in a year?

  3. Lesson 3 · standards area: saving and investing
    The account that grows

    A savings account keeps money safe. A retirement account lets it grow for decades without being taxed along the way, and if your job offers one with a match, that match is free money on the table..

    The check: If you put in $50 a month from age 20 to 65 at 7 percent, roughly how much is that at the end? (Use the tool if you like.)

  4. Lesson 4 · standards area: managing credit
    The first credit card, without the trap

    A credit card is a loan you pay back every month. Used that way, it costs nothing and builds a record that later gets you a cheaper car loan and a cheaper mortgage.

    The check: If you carried a $1,000 balance for a year at that rate, roughly how much interest is that?

  5. Lesson 5 · standards area: saving and managing risk
    One month of breathing room

    The first goal is not a fortune. It is one month of your bills sitting in savings, so a car repair or a slow month at work is a problem and not an emergency..

    The check: At the amount you set aside per paycheck in step two, how many months until you have one month saved? Guess is fine.

  6. Lesson 6 · standards area: investing and managing risk
    When someone has a sure thing

    At some point someone you know will have a coin, a stock, or a scheme that cannot lose. It can.

    The check: If a thing pays off one time in ten and returns three times your money when it does, what do you have on average after ten tries of that amount? (Hint: less than you started with.)

Unit 2: Out on your own

  1. Lesson 1 · standards area: spending
    The real monthly cost of a first apartment

    Rent is the big number on the listing, and it is never the whole number. Electricity, internet, renters insurance, and the things a kitchen needs all land in the same month, and together they usually add about a quarter on top of the rent..

    The check: If the extras add about a quarter on top, what does a month cost all in?

  2. Lesson 2 · standards area: earning income
    Taxes, the W-4, and the April settle up

    When you start a job you fill out a form called a W-4, and it tells your employer how much to hold back from each check for federal income tax. Hold back too little and April brings a bill; too much and April brings a refund, which is your own money coming back late..

    The check: If about 8 percent of that is held back for federal income tax over the year, how many dollars is that?

  3. Lesson 3 · standards area: spending and managing credit
    The first car by the numbers

    A car has four prices: what it costs to buy, what the loan adds, what insurance costs every month, and what gas and repairs cost over the year. The listing shows the first one.

    The check: A four year loan at 9 percent adds about a fifth of the price in interest over its life. About how much interest is that on yours?

  4. Lesson 4 · standards area: spending and managing credit
    The sticker price and the net price

    Every school has two prices. The sticker price is the one on the website.

    The check: Four years at that sticker price, if nothing changed, would come to how much?

  5. Lesson 5 · standards area: managing risk
    What insurance is for

    Insurance is a trade: you pay a small amount every month so that someone else pays a large amount if a certain bad thing happens. The deductible is the first part of that large amount that is still yours to pay..

    The check: Something covered costs $2,000 to fix. After your deductible, how much does the insurer pay?

  6. Lesson 6 · standards area: managing credit
    Your credit record and who reads it

    A credit record is a file about how you have handled borrowed money: whether bills were paid on time, how much of a card's limit is in use, how long the accounts have been open. A score is a number made from that file..

    The check: Using $50 of that limit in a month is what percent of the limit?

How it is measured

Five arithmetic questions before the first lesson and the same five after the last, drawn for each student from a pool of ten in that student's own practice numbers. The teacher's screen shows each student's two scores and the class average. A printable certificate names what each student can now do, by unit. Nothing in it is a grade; it is a measure of what moved.

Where it sits in the standards

The National Standards for Personal Financial Education, published by the Jump$tart Coalition and the Council for Economic Education in 2021, group the subject into six areas: earning income, spending, saving, investing, managing credit, and managing risk. Each lesson above names its area, and the lesson plans say the same with the objective and the discussion for each. A department head can match the areas to the state's own list from this page; no numbered standard is claimed that has not been checked against the lesson.

Why schools are looking now

Thirty states now require a standalone personal finance course for high school graduation, up from eight in 2020, by the count of Next Gen Personal Finance's State of Financial Education report; once every one of them is in force, about three in four public high school students will take one. (Next Gen Personal Finance, read October 2026.)

Counting states that fold the subject into another required course, the Council for Economic Education's 2026 Survey of the States puts the number at thirty nine. (Council for Economic Education, read October 2026.)

Texas passed a law in 2025 that makes a standalone personal financial literacy course a graduation requirement and tells the Texas Education Agency to publish a list of free, open curricula for it; the agency sets the first class year it applies to. (Champlain College Center for Financial Literacy, Texas fact sheet, read October 2026.)

The National Standards for Personal Financial Education, published jointly by the Jump$tart Coalition and the Council for Economic Education in 2021, group the subject into six areas: earning income, spending, saving, investing, managing credit, and managing risk. Every lesson here is placed in one of them. (Jump$tart Coalition, read October 2026.)

Questions, answered in writing

How long does it take to set up? About ten minutes. Make a class, type student names one per line, print the sheet of usernames and codes. Students go to one address and type the two things. There is nothing to install and no student account to create.

What about student privacy? No student ever makes an account or gives an email, a phone number, a photo, a location, or a real number. The roster holds a display name, a username, a code, and which steps were finished. Every student is treated as a child under COPPA whatever their age, the school's consent stands in for the parent's as the law allows for classroom use, and where a school shares a roster the site acts as the school's service provider under FERPA. The student data agreement is written in plain words for a district's counsel.

Does it meet our standards? Each of the twelve lessons is placed by area in the National Standards for Personal Financial Education (Jump$tart and the Council for Economic Education, 2021): earning income, spending, saving, investing, managing credit, managing risk. The lesson plans page shows the placement so a department head can match it to the state's own list. No standard is claimed that has not been checked.

How is learning measured? Five arithmetic questions before the unit and the same five after, drawn for each student from a pool of ten in that student's own practice numbers, so no two neighbors share a paper. The teacher's screen shows both scores for every student and the class average, which is the before and after a principal asks for.

What does it cost, and how do we pay? A test roster of 5 students is free for as long as you like. $149 a class a year for up to 40 students, $999 a year for every class at one school, districts from $4,000. By card from the teacher page, or by purchase order and invoice with thirty day terms; a W-9 and vendor forms on request. Schools exempt from sales tax mark it at checkout.

Does it tell students what to do with money? Never. It explains how a pay stub, a credit card, a lease, or a loan works and lets the student do the arithmetic with practice numbers. Every sentence is read for advice language before a student sees it, and no product, account, or fund is ever recommended, because the site carries no sponsor and sells nothing to students.

Can I see it before anyone signs anything? Yes, three ways. Walk the youth road yourself as a student would. Look at the sample teacher screen on this page. Make a class with a free test roster and watch real progress appear. Nothing is signed until a school decides to buy the year.

What it costs

A test roster of 5 is free for as long as you like. $149 a class a year, $999 a year for every class at one school, districts from $4,000. The one page summary and the student data agreement are ready to print for a principal or a district's counsel.