On December 17, we finished teaching our Finance 101 class at Orange County Academy for the second year.
This 10-week course teaches students how to handle money in a way that will set them up for financial success. The goal is to give them the tools and knowledge they will need as adults to function well.
The class utilizes hands-on teaching tools and object lessons, engaging the students and fostering participation.
This course includes an in-class economy in which students earn coins that they can trade in for candy at the end of each class period. This economy demonstrates fundamental macroeconomic principles in a way they can easily understand.
The course covers the following topics:
- Understanding the economic relationship between supply and demand
- Inflation and deflation, and their relationship to the value of currency
- Money as an economic tool
- Purchasing power of money
- Understanding a budget and its importance
- Prioritizing expenses
- Purchasing a vehicle
- Loans
- Planning for generosity
- Planning for your future
- Assets vs. liabilities
- Types of income
- Putting it all together
In addition, each student was given a summary of the material covered throughout the course and a list of some books and resources that might further their economic education.
Our goal for the course is to help each student avoid the mistakes that many of us make as we grow up and enter adulthood.
We haven’t posted pictures of the students and classroom for privacy issues relating to minors.