Financial Literacy Month
By Ben Wong
In 2004, Congress officially designated April as Financial Literacy Month. Financial Literacy Month was first recognized to highlight the importance of financial education and the consequences from a lack of understanding about personal finance. It originated from Youth Financial Literacy Day, which was started by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE). The aims of Financial Literacy Month are to empower people to make informed decisions about budgeting, saving, and investing, which can lead to financial stability and independence. Furthermore, teaching students financial literacy helps them avoid debt, plan for the future, and achieve their financial goals. The importance of learning about financial literacy is underscored by a 2022 survey by the NEFE that found 80% of adults surveyed wished they had taken a class in financial literacy. In addition, California has recently implemented a new high school financial literacy requirement, which mandates that all students must complete a semester-long personal finance course starting with the 2030-31 graduating class. CHSSP and the UCLA History-Geography Project are committed to providing more financial literacy resources for teachers and schools as they support students in meeting this new graduation requirement.
We aim to provide instructional resources that align with the Foundational Principles of the Personal Finance Curriculum Guide. However, we believe that teaching financial literacy should also acknowledge and address the structural inequities that impact personal finances. Agata Soroko, a postdoctoral scholar with the Civic Engagement Research Group at the University of California, Riverside found that financial literacy instruction often emphasizes “ideologies of merit,” which perpetuates the idea that one’s financial status is entirely determined by individual behavior. By focusing financial literacy on individual actions and choices, systemic issues such as the racial-wealth gap and historical inequities are left out. Comprehensive financial literacy instruction should include the social, political, and economic factors that affect financial well-being.
Equipping students with the details of budgeting, investments, insurance, and loans is just one part of financial literacy. There is also a need for a more critical financial literacy that equips students with the ability to analyze the social and economic disparities that affect their financial health and opportunities. A more complete picture of financial literacy should include teaching students about the predatory aspects of financial institutions, historic and present-day systemic inequities, and examples of how people have fought to attain financial well-being. We hope the list of resources below can be a starting point for your teaching about financial literacy.
CHSSP Resources on Economics and Economic History:
How are Resources Allocated?: This resource set, designed for high school economics students, asks: “how are resources allocated?” Through looking at historical examples of resource scarcity, students learn that all choices (personal, societal, and national) are inspired by incentives and have costs.
Financial Markets: This lesson, also for high school classrooms, provides students with an introduction to and overview of the United States' financial system. Students learn what financial markets are and how they work, focusing on savers, borrowers, and financial institutions.
Economic Data Tells a Story: Unemployment: This inquiry set uses historical unemployment data to help us understand today’s economy. Using historical and current data and sources, high school students answer the inquiry question: “how does data help to tell the story of the economy?”
The Stamp Act: The American Revolution provides a great lens through which to explore different financial systems with elementary-age students. This lesson on the Stamp Act introduces students to taxation and allows them to compare taxes in the current context (sales taxes, property taxes) and the historical context.
The Discovery of Gold in California: Economic history must also contend with the human and environmental costs that come with resource extraction. The Gold Rush is an excellent way to explore this with fourth-grade students. In this inquiry set, students explore the demographic, economic, and environmental changes caused by the Gold Rush in California between 1848 and the 1870s.
Additional Resources for Educators:
Social Media for Personal Finances: A New Trend for Millennials and Gen Z: A report from the Kansas City Federal Reserve about the ways that younger people are using social media.
Should Kids Really Learn About Getting Rich?: An article from New York Magazine about the harms of personal finance influencers on kids, particularly about the pursuit of wealth. This relates to topic 11 of the CDE personal finance outline.
Personal Finance Courses Are Booming. Do We Have the Teachers We Need?: An article from EdWeek about the need for teachers to be trained and have adequate resources when teaching personal finance.
Thinking Money for ALL Kids: Diverse and Inclusive Reads to Teach Young People about Money from the American Library Association (ALA) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Investor Education Foundation (FINRA Foundation). This guide lists financial education books for children, tweens, and teens with respect to the diversity in “cultures, backgrounds, experiences, circumstances, and values comprising our society.”
#KatesBookClub April Reads:
A Boy, A Budget, and a Dream by Jasmine Paul, illustrated by Jose Nieto.
Kass and Joey are siblings. Their parents give them an allowance of five dollars a week. Kass saves her allowance each week, but Joey spends most of his. “Saving just doesn’t flow well with my imagination or creativity.” When Joey realizes that he doesn’t have the money for STEM Camp, he knows he must change his spending habits and develop a budget. With his sister’s help, Joey creates a savings goal and is able to save enough money for STEM Camp. A savings template is included in the back matter which could be used by students.
I Am Money by Julia Cook and Garrett Gunderson, illustrated by Josh Cleland.
Who better to teach kids about money than MONEY himself? Absolutely love this book where readers learn how to earn money, how to save money, how to spend money (wisely), and the most important thing: how to give it away to help others! Students are also introduced to the different forms that money can take like cash, cards, and even crypto. Additional fun facts and money tips are provided in the back matter.
Last Stand, The by Antwan Eddy, illustrated by Jerome Pumphrey and Jarrett Pumphrey.
Saturday is for harvesting, and one boy is excited to work alongside his Papa as they collect eggs, plums, peppers, and pumpkins to sell at their stand in the farmer's market. Of course, it's more than a farmer's market. Papa knows each customer's order, from Ms. Rosa's pumpkins to Mr. Johnny's peppers. When Papa can't make it to the stand, his community gathers around him, with dishes made of his own produce. Many opportunities for classroom discussion. Don’t miss the back matter where the students can learn that Black farmers once represented 14% of all farming, but lack of access to grants and loans have greatly diminished that number.
Pa, Me, and Our Sidewalk Pantry by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by Zara Gonzalez Hoang and Saturday at the Food Pantry by Diane O’Neill, illustrated by Brizida Magro.
Two sensitive stories about community and food insecurity. In the first, a grandfather and his grandson have a sidewalk library where anyone can bring donations or take something to read. But what happens when people need more than books? In the second, Molly and her mom don't always have enough food, so one Saturday they visit their local food pantry. Molly's happy to get food to eat until she sees her classmate Caitlin, who's embarrassed to be at the food pantry. Two great books to introduce the problem of hunger in our communities and an opportunity for students to take action by setting up their own Little Free Pantry, helping at a local food bank, or holding a fundraiser.
Tia Isa Wants a Car by Meg Medina, illustrated by Claudio Munoz.
Tía Isa has been saving her earnings, but she doesn’t yet have enough money for the car she dreams of buying. Tía Isa keeps saving, and eventually her niece gets odd jobs in the neighborhood and starts saving, too. In the end, enough time has passed that not only does Tía Isa get her car, but the girl’s parents are finally home again from their native country, where they’d been caring for her ill abuela. Wonderful descriptions and an abundance of warmth distinguish this story of family, community, love, and longing eventually fulfilled. Spanish words are woven seamlessly into the narrative and defined in context. Also available in Spanish.
Tricking the Tallyman by Jacqueline Davies, illustrated by S.D. Schindler.
An entertaining picture book about the census? Yes, please! The tallyman is a census-taker, and in this book he is Phineas Bump. The year is 1790, and Phineas is a tallyman working for the U.S. government’s first national census, counting every individual in the country. But the folks in Tunbridge don’t want to be counted, as they know it will mean taxes and conscription, so they trick Phineas into recording a population of one. When the tricksters discover that the count will determine the number of men allowed to represent them in government, they ask for a recount. This time they try to inflate the number of residents with farm animals wearing bonnets and cloaks. Finally, when they understand that the census will determine taxes, conscription, AND representation in national government, Phineas Bump (who it turns out is not easily fooled) gets an accurate figure and Tunbridge is included in the census “fair and true.” A fascinating author’s note gives further details about the census of 1790, including the way in which people were not counted equally at that time, with each enslaved person recorded as three-fifths of a free person and Native Americans not counted at all.
Recent Scholarship in Economic History:
America Under the Hammer: Auctions and the Emergence of Market Values by Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor (2024): The first book-length study of the history of auctions in early America. Hartigan-O’Connor shows how, across the 18th and early 19th centuries, price became a way to express value — for material goods, land, and human beings. This work shows how auctions led to concepts of economic worth intersecting and centering on gender, race, and social bonds.
A War on Global Poverty: The Lost Promise of Redistribution and the Rise of Microcredit by Joanne Meyerowitz (2021): A new look at U.S. involvement in campaigns to end global poverty in the 1970s and 1980s. Meyerowitz examines how programs for global aid increasingly focused on women as the “deserving” beneficiaries.
The Indebted Woman: Kinship, Sexuality, and Capitalism by Isabelle Guérin, Santosh Kumar, and G. Venkatasubramanian (2023): Discusses the crucial (yet often overlooked) role that poor women play in making and consolidating debt and credit markets — what the authors call the “sexual division of debt.” An in-depth look at how women have become “the essential cogs in the wheel of financialized capitalism.”
Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands by Ronald L. Trosper (2022): How can Indigenous practices of centering care and working in reciprocity with the natural world help us create sustainable economic models? Trosper shows how relational Indigenous economic theory (micro, meso, and macro) can help us create new economic systems that better address increasing pressure from climate change.