Financial Literacy Resources

Understanding how to navigate all the financial requirements, services, options and opportunies available to us has become more complex over the past 25 years. Here are just a few technologies and terms which have entered our lives since the early 1980s: ATMs, online banking, online shopping, electronic funds transfer, identity theft, and phishing. The links below provide useful tools for adult literacy teachers and learners alike.

Training Organizations

These groups may be able to visit Massachusetts adult literacy programs for the purpose of providing an overview of financial literacy and/or helping fine-tune related curriculum units.

MIDAS (Boston area)
Tel. 617-787-3874, x214
Web: www.massassets.org

Websites

Community and Family Economics (CAFÉ)
The Literacy Assistance Center (LAC) in New York offers this small set of lesson plans, online resources and recommended books.

Consumer Jungle
Two main site sections—teachers, students—each of which has a motherlode of lessons, activities, definitions and PowerPoint visuals.

FDIC: Money Smart
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation offers an online train-the-trainer video for their financial literacy curriculum and the chance to order free copies of that curriculum on CD-ROM in a half dozen languages. They also periodically publish a short, useful newsletter (PDF only).

Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA): Investment Choices
A pointer site which offers a small set of useful lessons and worksheets, incluing college calculators, a kid's savings calculator and a four-unit guide on the basics of saving and investing.

How to Buy a Home: Lessons for Adult Learners
From the Fannie Mae Foundation, online versions of two of their home-buying books, plus an extensive set of tools for teachers.

Investopedia
Not a site that could be read by beginning or intermediate level learners—and annoying popup ads occur—but practitioners could adapt much of the information for classroom use, in addition to getting their own investment planning in order (!). The online dictionary and the buzzword list could be handy in all kinds of settings. (You don't want to be known as a "barefoot pilgrim.")

IRS: Understanding Taxes
From the source comes a website which covers all the basics of payroll and income taxes, complete with 36 lesson plans.

MetLife Life Advice: Financial
From a major health and life insurance company comes a feature-rich site covering banks, budgets, investments, taxes and much more, all written for high-level readers, but adaptable for most adult literacy classrooms. Related sections on the MetLife site cover Major Purchases (home, car, computer, apartment) and Insurance Basics (home, auto, health, life).

The Mint
Subtitle: "It makes cents." Mostly a good set of basic financial information and advice engagingly presented, with a few activities thrown in ("Making a budget").

MoneySKILL
A set of 34 classroom modules covering all manner of financial transactions: saving and spending, investing and credit, etc. Teachers need to register to use the site, but the site is offered free of charge.

mymoney.gov
The US Financial Literacy and Education Commission has put together a very link-dense site covering many of the common topics—credit, banking, planning for college, starting a business—and some not-so-common topics: responding to life events. The entire site also is available in Spanish.

Personal Financial Education Resources
This page from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston lists a few curricula and links to several other organizations, many of which offer publications. One of the best sublinks: www.federalreserveeducation.org/pfed, which will get you to all kinds of well-done text-and-graphics explanations of financial services (complete with quizes in many cases).