As a homeschool mom of eight kids, I have four adult children living in “the real world.” Looking back, I should have taught them more about financial choices. So I was thrilled to receive this Beyond Personal Finance Tween (8-12) Curriculum for my son, Mason, who I am still homeschooling.
Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. I was given a free product and compensated for my time writing this article. All opinions are my own.
Before Personal Finance Cover
The title of the book I received is called Before Personal Finance. It is written by Charla McKinley and her son Jack McKinley. When I buy homeschool curriculum, I always prefer to get books with a spiral spine, if possible. It makes it so easy for smaller hands to hold and work with, especially in a comfortable living room chair. So I love that the spine is spiral!
The cover has a cute little pink piggy bank wearing glasses with money flying in the air all around. It looks like “a fun activity to do,” rather than “another boring homeschool book.”
Learning How To Teach Personal Finance
I was worried about teaching this topic because my husband actually handles most of our money, paying bills, etc. But I was put at ease right away. In the beginning of the book there is a QR code or website to go to. Then there is a video to teach you how to use the curriculum. The video is not very long, but it put me very much at ease and made me feel like this will be easy to teach.
Each lesson takes approximately two hours but can be broken up throughout the week and is broken up into these four sections…
- Teaching – which is about two pages to read to your student
- Activity – an activity for your child to complete
- Scene – your child makes decisions for their Avatar (more details below) and writes them down
- Quiz – about ten questions and you as the teacher go to the website to find the answers to correct it
The Photos
My son, Mason, that I chose to do this review with is a tween who is more of a visual learner. I was so happy to see that there are photos and graphics throughout the book to give examples and make it more realistic and interesting for him.
The History Examples
Throughout the Beyond Personal Finance Tween (8-12) Curriculum book, Before Personal Finance, there are examples of influential financial figures that have made a difference. A few of them are Marco Polo, Janet Yellen, Ellen Alemany and Warren Buffet. There is a little info box next to a photo of the person. It's nice for them to have an example of a real person that did well in the finance world.
The Activities
There are fun activities to complete in each section. Some examples are word searches, budgeting for a party or drawing your own dollar bill's front and back, for example.
The Scenes With An Avatar In Before Personal Finance
In this curriculum, your child needs to create an Avatar, which is himself or herself starting out at age 13. The Avatar or “Future You” progresses through age 22. They are given a scenario and have to make money choices about how to earn, spend, save, whether to give, etc. There is a plot twist wheel to make things even more interesting. Any money left over at the end of each lesson is put in savings for the next section. For the section they are working on, students can buy items in the “Store” on this page or any previous “Store” pages, but the value increases with time.
Students can choose a job, change their job choice, choose not to have a job, etc. They can also use jobs they have in real life. Mason is a Red Cross Certified Babysitter and earns money, so we used that in his scenarios, plus he added additional jobs to earn money, which helped his Avatar to eventually buy a car, though it didn't happen as soon as he would have liked. The book does give you “Do Over” pages in case you would like to actually go back and re-budget and earn that car sooner. Mason didn't choose to since he knew his adult siblings didn't get a car until ages 20, 18, 19 and 17 and they were fine because they used a family car to get to work.
Mason did seem to enjoy all of the curriculum, but his favorite part was having his own Avatar and making decisions for him. He really lit up and spent a lot of time on decision making. Mason decided to get out a spare notebook and sketch some pictures of things he would purchase in the store, like the Games purchase he made. He drew what a futuristic console might look like in a living room with his Avatar playing it with a friend. I asked if I could show a picture of what he drew, but he wants to keep it private and I respect that.
Conclusion
If you would like to teach your student some realities of money in the “real world” without having them spend “real money,” this is the way to do it. It was easy for me as a homeschool mom to teach and my son had fun while learning. I highly recommend you check out this valuable homeschool finance curriculum book and I am curious to see Mason's future now that he has learned this.
He enjoyed it so much, in a few years from now, in one of his High School years, I have it on my list to get the Beyond Personal Finance Teen (13+) Self-Paced, Online Curriculum where the Avatar will be ages 23 to 42.
How To Find Beyond Personal Finance:
Website: https://beyondpersonalfinance.com
Instagram: @beyondpersonalfinance
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondpersonalfinance
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