Foundations in Personal Finance Review!

Ever wish you had a money coach when you were in high school? Someone to talk to you in plain English about the future and how to avoid jumping into the debt ocean?

I sure do!

My boys ages 13 and 15 are getting an opportunity that many of us don’t have until we are decades older and many times in debt. That is the opportunity to look money myths in the eye and avoid them. In essence, setting themselves up for financial success.

“The Bible tells us that we’re stewards of God’s resources. By definition, a steward is not an owner, but a manager – someone who takes care of the possessions of someone else.

When we believe that God is the owner of all we have, we gain a new perspective on the way we handle the resources we have been given. When you choose to handle money God’s ways, things that used to be difficult will become easier. Budgeting, compromising, saving, giving sacrificing, making wiser decisions with your money–all of it will become clearer.”

-Dave Ramsey

In Foundations in Personal Finance, Dave Ramsey enthusiastically takes the homeschool student through 4 basic areas:

Saving and Budgeting

Credit and Debt

Financial Planning and Insurance

Income, Taxes and Giving

This curriculum is composed of 12 chapters broken down into a total of 90 lessons, complete with syllabus, pre and post tests, 3 student activities per chapter, printable financial forms, case studies, answer keys and scripture. Your highschooler will learn practical, common sense information from Dave’s team consisting of his daughter, Rachel Cruze, Chris Hogan, and Jon Acuff.

Don’t know much about handling your own finances? No worries! Leading this study is easy on the parent or co-op teacher – and you’ll learn a lot too!! Each chapter is administered similarly. First, Learning Outcomes and Key Terms are read through. As students watch each lesson, journalling and fill-in questions are posed. After all the lessons for that chapter are viewed, the student revisits the Learning Outcomes section to gauge their progress. A Chapter Summary is included before the Chapter Test.

Included on the Teacher’s Resources cd-rom are various printable activities that accompany each chapter plus related Budget Building exercises can be found at Foundations U.

As you can see, this course is very thorough!

Extending beyond Dave Ramsey’s first 5 Foundations of: Save a $500 Emergency Fund, Get Out of Debt, Pay Cash for Your Car, Pay Cash for College, Build Wealth and Give, both my boys are now focused on mapping out creative ways to attend college and purchase a car without incurring debt so that they can in turn help others in need.

It has been a fulfilling time to sit with my sons as they learn. Not only will they earn 1/2 high school credit, they are building a firm financial foundation. Though at first, some of the budgeting exercises left them chuckling due to their current income (i.e. allowance), they understand their responsibility in stewarding future income responsibly. And that is music to this mom’s ears!

Check out a sample chapter for yourself!

Foundations in Personal Finance is aligned with the National Standard for Financial Literacy and “also incorporates Common Core English Language Arts Standards in order to promote literacy skills.”

Final Thoughts:

I am not a fan of Common Core Standards.

That being said I’d like to note that the video portion of this curriculum is very much “old school Dave Ramsey.” Heavy on common sense advice and humor! Having gone through The Financial Peace program myself years ago I can make this statement with confidence.

In regards to the standards that the workbook is aligned to, I cannot quote the specifics of this alignment. However, I can say that because of the thoroughness of material, some sections within a chapter do seem repetitive and exercises such as “Draw a picture representation of each of the following terms” encountered in each chapter seem out of place at a high school level.

As with any program, it’s up to the parent to decide what portions need to be written, what portions need to be discussed and what portions can be skipped.