I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought that the school curriculum needed a lot of improvement. As a high school student going into University next year, I’ve started to think a lot about my future. That included me thinking about becoming financially independent … and I realized that pretty much I knew absolutely nothing about personal finance. After doing a bit of research, I realized that I wasn’t alone. In a federal government survey, respondents answered 14 financial literacy questions with an average score of 60.6%, which is barely passing (“The State of Financial Literacy in Canada”, 2019). To be fair, that’s not that bad, but students graduating high school are especially thrown into the deep end when they barely know how to swim. Student debt, paying rent, and credit cards are just the tip of the iceberg.

Schools Don't Really Teach Personal Finance 

Now, I know that the school curriculum is not to blame for every single grievance experienced by high school students. In my experience, it’s not the worst thing in the world (my world being Ontario, Canada). But a pretty significant point of contention that I’ve always had with the curriculum was that there was never a class about “how to be an adult” that would prepare students for life after high school. The Pythagorean theorem and the quadratic formula had been drilled into my head, but I didn’t know how a mortgage worked. I could write an essay on the difference between plant and animal cells, but I could barely tell you the difference between simple and compound interest. The closest thing I had to an Adulting 101 course was Civics and Careers, in which I learned precisely nothing. Granted, my high school experience isn’t going to be your high school experience, and the courses that I took and the materials I learned are pretty high school dependent. But after doing some research, it didn’t look like I was missing out on a whole lot, personal finance curriculum-wise. 

Why I created this Website

Thus, I was left to my own devices to educate myself on personal finance. I could easily find bits and pieces of useful information, because it was definitely out there, but I struggled to find a detailed, comprehensive resource that was targeted for high school students going into University. So… I decided to create this website, so that other teenagers confused about personal finance would have a resource to learn about budgeting, credit, debit, and everything else in one place. Being smart with your money is especially important in your early 20’s because you can set yourself up well for life if you make the right decisions. Learning about personal finance is a really important part of growing up and becoming a functioning adult. Yeah, it sucks that high school doesn’t teach all the basics of being an adult, but maybe learning to become an adult is part of becoming an adult.

So that’s the story behind why I created this website. TLDR: I realized I knew nothing about personal finance and wanted to help others in my position. If you want, read it, learn from it, and take notes. If you find something of value, share it with your friends, and fellow students, and spread the message of personal finance to those who need it most!