JA Personal Finance 2.0

Through JA Personal Finance 2.0, students experience the interrelationship between today’s financial decisions and future financial freedom. To achieve financial health and wellness, they learn about money-management strategies, including earning, employment and income, budgeting, savings, credit and debt, consumer protection, smart shopping, risk management, investing, credit card usage, debt management, and net worth.

Following participation in the program, students will be able to:

— Identify how their personal finances affect their quality of life
— Understand how their financial choices will be the basis for meeting their needs and wants.

JA Personal Finance is part of the JA Financial Literacy Pathway and is recommended for high school students (Grades 9-12).
This volunteer-led program can be implemented as a classroom based, remote live, or after school program. It consists of eight 45-minute sessions with 3 additional modular sessions. Program implementation depends on educator requirements and correlations to local standards.

Basic implementation includes Sessions One–Five delivered by the volunteer.
Sessions Six through Eight are optional and designed to be student self-guided activities with teacher or volunteer support.
Sessions Nine, Ten, and Eleven are both optional and modular. Each session includes self-guided learning experiences and an introduction and wrap-up by a teacher or volunteer.

Program Concepts

Benefits versus costs, budgeting, compound interest, consequences, cost of living, credit, credit card fraud, credit reporting and rating, debt, delayed gratification, earnings, education, expense tracking, financial management, identity theft, income, information mining, interest, investing, job skills, limited resources, liquidity, maximizing earnings, opportunity cost, pawnshop, payday loan, priorities, rent-to-own, return on investment, reward, risk, saving, savings plan, unlimited wants, variable and discretionary expenses