Get a Financial Life NYC
A free, open-source financial literacy curriculum for New York high school students—sign up to download now!
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Get a Financial Life NYC lessons
This 10-lesson curriculum explores what New York City’s high school students need to know—and want to know—about money.
Sign up or sign in now to review, download, and customize lessons for your students.
Lesson 1: Budgeting
Budgeting is all about making a plan for how to spend and to save money. The key objective of this lesson is to get students in the habit of saving 10% of the money they take in from a job, as gifts, anywhere. It's a crucial bedrock of lifelong financial well-being.
Lesson 2: Saving in a Bank
Research shows that people who have bank accounts are much more likely to build up savings, have access to credit, and get a home loan. This lesson gives students specific tools to research banks, find one that will keep their money safe, become engaged with the financial system through opening an account, and even earn a decent interest rate.
Lesson 3: Debit Cards
Unlike credit cards, a debit card is a smart tool for managing and spending money. In this lesson, students will learn to open a checking account so they can fund and use a debit card. They’ll also learn to never withdraw more money than they have in their account.
Lesson 4: Credit
Students understand that the law generally requires them to be 21 years old to get a credit card. Regardless of what they hear on social media, they don’t need one any earlier. This lesson explains why working exceptions to the rule to get a credit card sooner can sometimes be worse for their credit scores.
Lesson 5: Smart Spending
Students today have to make smart spending choices in the face of the most sophisticated marketing techniques society has ever seen. In this lesson, they will become aware of the most common (and sneakiest) tactics companies use to sell them things they don’t need or want--or worse, can’t actually afford.
Lesson 6: Investing & Building Wealth
Even if the last thing on most students’ minds is investing, the messaging out there is more confusing than ever. Influencers are making bad investing ideas seem enticing (and look like simple ways to get easy money). This lesson explains why, when they’re ready to invest, students should start with the one thing that makes sense: index funds.
Lesson 7: College & Credentials
The truth is, college graduates earn $1 million more in their lifetimes than those who stop after high school. There are also dozens of credentialing programs–in competitive industries such as tech and engineering–that can be quick and cost-effective paths to financial stability. This lesson weighs options and explores loans and financial aid for students who want to attend college.
Lesson 8: Working
From selling things online to NYC’s Summer Youth Employment Program, many students already work while in high school. In this lesson, they’ll learn commonsense rules for balancing work and school, how to prepare for their first jobs post high school or college, and how taxes really work.
Lesson 9: Healthcare & Benefits
The first objective of this lesson is to underline the importance of healthcare and the financial risks of going without it. Students will learn how to stay covered into their professional futures. They will also review benefits available to them as NYC high schoolers, from the obvious (free city transit) to lesser known (paid internships, culture passes).
About Get a Financial Life NYC
It all started with two simple questions:
What do New York City’s high school students need to know about money? And what do they want to know?
Over the span of a year, these questions were asked of more than 250 people across all five boroughs, from educators and principals to nonprofit leaders and journalists. Most importantly, we also asked them of students.
The result is Get a Financial Life NYC, an open-source, 10-lesson money curriculum for 11th and 12th grade New Yorkers.
Developed alongside Heckscher Foundation for Children, a leading nonprofit for NYC education, the curriculum’s ready-to-use lesson plans can be taught in ten hours, help meet New York State’s graduation requirements in the 1/2 credit economics course, and can be incorporated into any existing class.
What kids want to know about money:
150
high school students
interviewed
10 hours
Completion time for
all lessons
75
NYC educators
consulted
All 5 boroughs
represented in
pilot program
Meet the creators of GFL NYC
Beth Kobliner is a financial literacy expert and the author of two New York Times bestsellers: Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties; and Make Your Kid a Money Genius (Even If You’re Not), a guide for parents to teach financial basics to children. She was appointed to two terms on President Obama’s Council on Financial Capability and created a viral infographic on money lessons for kids. She was a staff writer for Money magazine, and has contributed to outlets such as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, CNN and the PBS NewsHour. Her favorite TV gig was partnering with Sesame Workshop and teaching Elmo how to spend, share, and save money.
Jonathan Wroble co-created this curriculum and heads GFL NYC’s operations as the program grows across public schools in NYC. His background is in media literacy, research, and communications.
