Budget lesson part of a required high school class

[bonnotsm9]

It's a good start, although it might be more beneficial as a junior or senior class. I'm not sure the stuff I learned would remain in my head clear through High School. So many new things going on, so much to ingest.

My son who is going into 9th grade and I had a conversation about exactly this yesterday. Personal Finance is required for graduation in our state and I gave him the option of taking it or another required course, Health, this year. He chose Health saying he thought that Personal Finance would be more useful later in high school. His older brother took it as a Junior. I agreed.

[farmgirl_82]

We had a class like this in 8th grade. Each student had to find a job (in the classifieds) that showed an hourly wage, then you based your budget on a 40 hr/wk or 20/hr week. If the job was part time- you only got to use 20/hr week.

Once we had the job, we had to search the classifieds for an ad for an apartment that also showed the monthly cost. If it was unfurnished, we had to scour the paper for ad for appliances that we could pay for on our budget.

We had to cut the actual ads out of the newspaper and put it on the budget paper for the teacher to approve

Then the teacher set what bills were due based on local rates, and we had to balance our budget and write checks to the companies on the due dates that the teacher provided. If you wanted extras like cable/cell phones/clothes, etc, we

It was a tough assignment to handle at 8th grade level, but it definately got me thinking about money for the future.

[bmd1011]

I wish our area had classes like those. They would be wonderful tools for the future!