High School Personal Financial Literacy
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License Model
FlexPoint or School/District Hosted
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Number of Credits
0.5
Description
Learning to make sound financial decisions is one of the most important lessons a student can learn. In this course, students will learn financial decision-making skills using real-life applications and data. The primary content for the course focuses on learning the ideas, concepts, knowledge, and skills that will enable students to implement beneficial personal decision-making choices; to become wise, successful, and knowledgeable consumers, savers, investors, users of credit and money managers; and to be participating members of a global workforce and society. Personal Financial Literacy is a half-credit (0.5) elective and offers an option for students to receive honors credit.Module 01 - Education, Careers, and Income
- goals beyond a high school education
- job-related costs and benefits
- factors that impact the earnings of workers
- gross and net income
- the relationship between demand for goods and worker wages
- productivity of workers
- changes in economic conditions
- effects of a recession on the unemployment rate
- direct and indirect taxes
- progressivity of taxes
- purpose and use of taxes
- purpose of creating a budget
Module 02 - A Time to Spend, A Time to Save
- factors influencing consumer decisions
- researching goods and services
- ways retailers express prices of products in order to influence consumers
- donating to charitable and non-profit organizations
- differences between savings and checking accounts
- services available through financial institutions
- reasons people choose immediate spending over saving
- employer benefit programs
- inflation's impact on society
- relationship between inflation, nominal interest rate, and real interest rate
- ways the government protects consumers from fraud
- government's role in the investment market
Module 03 - Understanding Credit
- types of credit
- annual percentage rate (APR)
- credit options
- fixed and variable interest rate
- down payments and collateral
- secured and unsecured loans
- common types of mortgages
- significance of credit scores and reports
- negative effects of failing to repay a loan
- ways to receive a credit report
- ways those in debt can seek assistance
- benefits and costs to filing for bankruptcy
- consumer protection laws for credit
- government regulation of credit card companies
- goals of fiscal policy (Honors only)
- how changes in fiscal policy affect the national budget (Honors only)
Module 04 - Managing Risk
- real return on an investment
- costs associated with investments
- how buyers and sellers determine the price of financial assets
- how interest rates affect investments
- how economic conditions affect investments
- how investor actions, the U.S. economy, and the global marketplace impact the rate of return on investment
- level of risk associated with investments
- how the term of investments affects the rate of return
- factors that determine a person's willingness to take financial risk
- importance of diversification in investing
- how insurance policies work
- different types of insurance available
- ways to avoid identity theft
- assistance for victims of identity theft
- recognize the purposes of sample surveys, experiments, and observational studies (Honors only)
- explain how randomization relates to sample surveys, experiments, and observational studies (Honors only)
- evaluate reports based on data (Honors only)
- use data to estimate a population mean or proportion (Honors only)
- interpret differences in shape, center, and spread in the context of the data sets (Honors only)
- use the mean and standard deviation of a data set to fit it to a normal distribution and to estimate population percentages (Honors only)
- represent data with plots on the real number line (Honors only)
- use data to compare two treatments (Honors only)
- use simulations to decide if differences between parameters are significant (Honors only)