Personal Finance Lesson Plans

We want to make it as easy as possible to teach real personal finance skills to your students, so we have been working with our friends at EconEdLink.org, along with our own team of personal finance experts and educators, to build a set of the best lesson plans and teacher resources anywhere in the world.

We also have dozens more lesson plans on different topics you can browse!

This collection covers other Personal Finance Lesson Plans that don’t fit well in those other groups.

Personal Finance Lesson Plans for All Age Groups

HowTheMarketWorks Lesson 1: Using The Stock Game In Personal Finance

  • Topic: Business and Stocks
  • Personal Finance Standard Covered: Investing (Standard 2) – Evaluate investment alternatives.
  • Source: HowTheMarketWorks
  • Description: This lesson plan is designed to give students the basics of what defines a “business” and why companies issue stock. It also covers a large amount of basic finance vocabulary, with practical examples.

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Personal Finance Lesson Plans for Elementary School and Up

Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees

  • Topic: Money
  • Personal Finance Standard Covered: Employment and Income (Standard 2) – Compare sources of personal income and compensation
  • Source: EconEdLink, by Patricia Bonner
  • Description: In this lesson students will identify methods for getting money, explain what to do when they find money and other things that belong to someone else, create a plan for earning extra money and conduct a survey to learn more about typical allowances provided to people their age.

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What Do Other People Want To Be?

  • Topic: Career Planning
  • Personal Finance Standard Covered: Employment and Income(Standard 1) – Explore job and career options
  • Source: EconEdLink, by Connections Cross-Curricular
  • Description: Students identify several major career paths, and build graphs based on graphs of different people’s job choices. They can then visualize which jobs have the most competition.

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Personal Finance Lesson Plans For Middle School And Up

Online scams and schemes

    • Topic: Scams
    • Personal Finance Standard Covered: Financial Decision Making (Standard1) – Recognize responsibilities associated with personal financial decisions.
    • Source: InspireFinancialLearning.ca
    • Description: In this lesson, students will learn ways to avoid financial scams and schemes designed to defraud customers.

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About Consumer Privacy

  • Topic: Personal Information
  • Personal Finance Standard Covered: Financial Decision Making (Standard 7) – Control personal information
  • Source: Practical Money Skills
  • Description: The goal of this lesson plan is to provide students with an awareness of the importance of protecting their personal information and the potential consequences of their privacy being invaded by scam artists and identity thieves.

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College: Where Am I Going To Go?

  • Topic: Career Planning
  • Source: EconEdLink, by Mick Duckworth
  • Description: This lesson plan introduces students to the opportunity cost of choosing one school over another, and a wealth of other information about how to look for schools, and how to approach applying for universities, and much more.

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Entrepreneur!

  • Topic: Career Planning
  • Source: EconEdLink, by Connections Cross-Curricular
  • Description: This lesson plan is designed to help students understand why people start their own businesses, some of the risks, and some of the biggest challenges of getting their ideas off the ground!

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Personal Finance Lesson Plans For High School And Up

Inflate your knowledge

    • Topic: Inflation
    • Personal Finance Standard Covered: Employment and Income (Standard1) – Explore Job and Career Options.
    • Source: InspireFinancialLearning.ca
    • Description: In this lesson, students have an opportunity to experience the effects of inflation first-hand through an interactive classroom auction! Students will learn about the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as a measure of purchasing power and standard of living and apply their knowledge to goods and services they purchase today.

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Living on Your Own

  • Topic:Cost of living alone
  • Personal Finance Standard Covered: Financial Decision Making (Standard 5) – Apply communications strategies when discussing financial issues
  • Source: Practical Money Skills
  • Description: This lesson will help students understand the costs of living on their own and provide practice in setting up budgets. Help students to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to interpret and evaluate lease/rental agreements.

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Open for Business!

  • Topic: Entrepreneurship
  • Personal Finance Standard Covered: Employment and Income (Standard 1) – Explore job and career options
  • Source: EconEdLink, by Marsha Masters
  • Description: This engaging lesson gives students the opportunity to identify risks and rewards of entrepreneurship and distinguish between entrepreneurs who start a business to produce a good or provide a service.

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Invest in Yourself

  • Topic: Human Capital
  • Source: EconEdLink, by Scott Niederjohn
  • Description: In this lesson students will explain how human capital is related to career choices, opportunities, and income. They will define opportunity cost and give examples of it.

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Want More? Click Here To Browse Our Full Collection Of Personal Finance Lesson Plans!