Beyond Personal Finance

Beyond Personal Finance by Charla McKinley is a comprehensive high school program offered in our Personal Finance.  She designed the course to give young adults a thorough understanding of money, budgeting, and stewardship before they graduate from high school. The author, Charla McKinley, describes this course as a smash-up of Dave Ramsey and the Game of Life.

Designed for High School

While the Dave Ramsey course is excellent, it is designed for adults in financial trouble who need a way out of that trouble.

Most high school kids have difficulty understanding what that could look like. Money is, after all, something most of them don’t have much of, think much about, or struggle with. A benefit of Middle-class America is that our kids have their needs met and a good portion of their wants provided for, too. As a result, most teens have an abstract rather than concrete understanding of money. As one of the students in my high school class said, “Bills? I don’t have any.”

And that is exactly why Charla wrote this course. To give kids an idea of what kind of money questions and issues they will face as young adults and how to plan for, manage and think about the monkey wrenches that life continually throws in the way of all everyone out there “adulting.”

Lessons Included in the Course

This program consists of lessons in the following:

• College and Careers
• Budgeting
• Car Purchase Apartment Rental
• Spouse Selection
• Credit Cards and Interest
• Baby & Payroll
• House Purchase
• Insurance
• School Choice
• Investments,
• Business Basics
• Layoffs and Reconciliations
• Income Tax
• The Dangers of Divorce
• Retirement

As you can see, Charla does not hold back. She addresses head-on difficult issues like layoffs and divorce. And while everyone says it won’t happen to them, the statistics say that 43% of American workers will be laid off at least once during their working years, and 42-45% of all first-time marriages will end in divorce (and that number rises to 60% for second marriages). Monkey wrenches mess up even the best plans; these life skills will prepare our young people to overcome some of those obstacles.

Having Fun While Thinking of the Future

Think of this as a High School Cost of Living Project on steroids. One thing I love about this program is that there is vocabulary included in each chapter. Kids get a great overview of things like withholding tax, deferment, and depreciation. This course is meaty but not boring. Each chapter includes information and goofy videos like Identity Theft that keep everyone laughing as they tackle serious stuff.

The Teacher’s manual is thorough and includes key terms, answer keys, charts, and all the information needed to utilize this program in a class or co-op. However, not all of the pages in the teacher’s manual are numbered, making it hard to track. I went through and tabbed sections for easier use. I would have loved chapter objectives and a more structured, traditional Teacher’s Manual in my perfect world. This one has so much information it can be overwhelming. But the value of the program makes it worth taking the time to tab each chapter and highlight the information you want to cover for each class period.

I’ve had several of my kids work through a COLA before and facilitated other students as well, and Beyond Personal Finance is the most comprehensive program that I’ve seen that gives kids real-world information that relates to where they’re at in life- as young adults about to embark on a great adventure.

It is a fantastic preparatory program- perfect for homeschools, co-ops, class COLA days, or UMS programs! We’ll utilize this program with our True North Homeschool Academy online Career Explorationclass!

Scholarship Information

Students who are seniors and have completed the BPF program are also eligible to apply for their $1000 Scholarship Program. Visit the website to get all the details and requirements. The deadline to apply for that is no later than May 1st. Follow them on social media for updates on the program. If your high schooler needs more career exploration, check out our Young Professional Series of e-books. (The Scholarship will reopen for the next school year.)