Welcome to the Real World, Son

I’ve been spending a lot of time talking about money and the need for us to be teaching our high school students how to handle finances responsibly. Knowing how to handle money wisely will make a huge difference in their lives when they graduate high school and are on their own in the real world.

Let me side-track for a moment….if you read Teaching Teens Real Life Money Skills: What We’re Doing, you’ll remember by “rant” about one of my pet peeves regarding young people not knowing how to make change. Well, it happened again last night. The bill was $5.81. I handed the cashier $6. She entered it into the register and it showed her she needed to give me .19 cents in change. Then… I did the unthinkable, I said, “Oh wait, I have a penny” and held it out. She looked at the register, said “Ah”, “Ah”…. “I can’t take it because I’ve already entered it into the computer and it shows me how much change to give you.” I just sighed and took my .19 cents. My grandkids were with me and were surprised. My grandson, with his sweet, sensitive heart, said “Maybe she’s just tired.” Yeah, maybe…

OK, end of rant and back to the topic at hand: our kids need to know how to handle money, especially in this economy. It’s part of life, a huge part. To help you with this, I came across a free online resource I want to share with you; it looks like fun. (Of course, all of us homeschooling parents know what looks like fun to us may likely elicit a loud groan from our kids – oh well.)

The website is called Making Ends Meet: A Comprehensive Budgeting Project. From their introduction:

You’ve just graduated from college and earned a bachelor’s degree. Your parents have told you to get a job and get out of the house. Welcome to the real world. In this WebQuest you will get a job in a new state, buy a car, find a place to live, develop and analyze a monthly budget and present your experiences to your peers.

If you are looking for a life-in-the-real-world study on real life money skills, Making Ends Meet could fit the bill (no pun intended ). The course uses free internet resources, and walks your student through real life scenarios.

If nothing else, it will show your highschooler how much it costs to live on their own. It could very well provide the motivation for them to take seriously the need to learn and begin to put into action good money management skills. To find out more, click here or on any of the Making Ends Meet links above.

Check it out & let me know what you think!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 11:50 am and is filed under Home Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.