A New (and better) Personal Finance Curriculum for High School – a review of Personal Finance Illustrated® (2024)

Overview: When you want a personal finance curriculum for high school that isn't the same outdated information you've heard before, check this one out! Note: This post sponsored by Personal Finance Illustrated® but all opinions are my own.

Trying to follow a one-size-fits-all financial ideology doesn't always work.

Because one size hardly ever fits all. Usually it fits a few, sometimes many, but definitely not all.

And these days, personal finance is a much more complicated animal than it was even a few years ago. (Thank you, Covid-19.)

How will you prepare your teen for what lies ahead? For the decisions they'll need to make? For the fact that no matter how much you plan, life sometimes throws crazy Rona-style curveballs at you?

You need something better than what is out there. You need something that gives them the wisdom and information they'll need in order to determine what is the best course of action in ANY circ*mstance, considering ALL the possible options, not just the one deemed by someone else as the only acceptable path.

You need something realistic, something that applies to THIS new day and age—something that could actually apply to EVERY day and age—because the information isn't slanted in one direction or limited in scope. Because it presents what your teen needs to understand through a big-picture lens, not a zoomed-in, idealized, frankly quite narrow-minded viewpoint.

Because doggone it, the outdated methods didn't work for me, and they might not have worked for you, either.

I'm still climbing out of a financial mess that was created AFTER I had read all the usual stuff about personal finance. That stuff didn't prepare me for the decisions that actually came my way; it didn't give me enough information; there was no way to evaluate MY very individual situation. All I had was a list of steps I was “supposed” to do; but they didn't account for what I was actually dealing with. (And to top it off, when I called to speak to the so-called guru for advice, I was silenced within a minute and given a brush-off generic response. TWICE. Still slightly salty about that; not gonna lie.)

I wish I'd had the information included in Personal Finance Illustrated®!

Personal Finance Illustrated® is a new personal finance curriculum for high school, and I'm so glad to be one of the first to introduce everyone to its awesomeness!

Personal Finance Illustrated® was created by a guy who trained financial planners for over 26 years. And guess what: he also taught high school. That makes him uniquely qualified to teach your teen how to be an adult with their money.

That is what PFI does: It gives your teen EVERYTHING THEY NEED TO KNOW to make THEIR OWN DECISIONS. That's what adulting is about, right? Not just blindly following someone else, but weighing pros and cons for yourself and then making a call and living by it. THIS is what we truly want for our teens.

It's not just about avoiding debt, y'all; it's about what you do with the money you have.Personal Finance Illustrated® gives the foundation and the extensive further information needed to know how best to use your “lifetime capital potential” in conjunction with all the demands that will be placed on it over time. It's not about “steps,” it's about discernment and knowledge so your teen can make the decisions that are best for their own situation.

The Personal Economic Model

Don Blanton developed a unique way of looking at your finances; it's called the Personal Economic Model. Once your teen grasps this respresentation, they'll be equipped to make wise choices that fit their goals for whatever they want their financial future to look like.

“Imagine a picture that helps you understand how money really works—how certain financial products play a role in solving your challenges, how they work together to impact your personal finances. Hearing or reading about how money works increases our level of understanding butseeing how it works cements an indelible image in our mind and moves our level of understanding to a higher level” (italics mine). –from The Personal Economic Model Student Edition, p. 5.

No other personal finance curriculum for high school has the Personal Economic Model. The model is SO powerful, so complete, so effective that your teen will remember it for life. It will guide them years from now when they have choices to make, because they'll know exactly how those choices will affect their bottom line and their future goals.

The Personal Economic Model is not only unique, it is interactive: it can be manipulated to show cause and effect for myriads of decisions affecting both short- and long-term outcomes. Your teen can experiment with the diagram, making virtual financial “decisions” and then seeing with their own eyes what the results will be. More savings? Sure; see what happens! Considering a Corvette? OK—let's look at how that will affect the big picture! Buying a house? Notice what happens to taxes and savings!

The most complete personal finance curriculum for high school

Along with the Personal Economic Model, the course is THOROUGH, chock full of information about everything you ever wanted to know about personal finance. (Now you can! Why not learn along with your teen?) In fact it's really more of a financial literacy curriculum.

In comparison with other personal finance course options out there, Personal Finance Illustrated® has much more information about many more topics; in fact there is enough information for a full high school credit (although you can cut it down to use for .5 credit if you want to).

Related Reading: Planning High School Electives for Your Homeschool

Chapters include:
Time Value of Money
Opportunity Cost
Temperament and Finances
The Importance of Protection
Access to Capital
Mortgages
and many more.

Compare these with any other personal finance class for teens. Most of those are about making a budget and balancing a checkbook. Personal Finance Illustrated® goes way beyond that.

I've spent some time in the course, which has videos and an online text and writing assignments and quizzes and discussion forums—more than you may need, in fact; you can select whatever you think is important to customize the course for your teen—and I am impressed with what I see and the depth of knowledge that is imparted.

And not gonna lie; Don's smooth southern accent is a joy to listen to! LOL!

What other course provides all of that? Plus 25+ interactive resources, in addition to the Personal Economic Model, that allow your teen to put numbers in and get results out. Whether it's mortgage amortization or federal tax liability or the cost of procrastination (and more), this course has an interactive calculator for it. Again, compare that to any other personal finance course out there. I dare you! :-)

Several options to choose from:

Personal Finance Illustrated® is the only personal finance curriculum for high school that has all of these options:

->You can choose the homeschool edition, which comes with teacher helps and assessment options for each chapter.

->Or you can choose the self-study edition, for the teen (and mom) that just want the straight information without the fluff of helps or assignments.

->For each of those editions, there is a Standard (secular) option and a Biblically-based (Christian) option, which has additional chapters about work and money from a Biblical standpoint.

->Or you can choose Dual Enrollment through Bryan College!

Something for everyone!

Again I ask you: Does any other curriculum offer this many possibilities for how YOU want your teen to learn?

Go to The Personal Finance Illustrated® Website

I have looked, y'all, and I have not seen anything that compares to what Personal Finance Illustrated® has to offer. It's worth the extra investment; trust me on this one. How can you put a price on financial wisdom and stability?

If you want your teen to be equipped and fully prepared for whatever life may throw at them, then I urge you to take a look at Personal Finance Illustrated® for yourself. I think you'll see that it's all the information you wished you'd had. Give it to your kid so they can avoid the same mistakes!

You can find PEM LIFE, the creators of Personal Finance Illustrated®, on Facebook and YouTube.