Economics & Finance
A contract or loan offer can make sense on the surface and still leave you with a terrible choice. Financial literacy means understanding the numbers, reading the terms, recognizing incentives, and protecting future options.
Financial Literacy and Money Skills for Teens
The Floor covers essential money competence. The broader map includes markets, entrepreneurship, economic systems, and decisions involving opportunity cost and risk.
What young adults should be able to do by 18 · The formal Floor: Domain 6
The Floor for This Domain
The non-negotiable minimum. This is the contract, not the menu — what a floor-complete 18-year-old must actually be able to do.
- Manage their own money: budget, track spending, save toward goals, avoid debt traps, understand what credit is and how it works
- Read a paycheck, a bank statement, a contract, a lease—and know what they're signing
- Understand how taxes work well enough to file a simple return and not be blindsided by obligations
- Make informed decisions about big purchases, loans, and investments—know enough to ask the right questions and spot bad deals
- Understand how insurance works at a basic level—health, property, liability—well enough to make informed decisions about coverage and not get steamrolled by providers
- Grasp how markets work at a basic level: supply and demand, prices as signals, why things cost what they cost
- Understand that economic systems are designed, have tradeoffs, and serve different interests—no system is neutral
- Think about value beyond money: time, opportunity cost, what they're trading when they make choices
- Figure out how to move and use money across borders without getting obviously fleeced
- Recognize the difference between spending, saving, and investing—and why the distinction matters over time
Not on the Floor
- Stock-picking or day-trading
- Macroeconomic theory
- Predicting markets
- Wealth accumulation as a goal in itself
The Broader Map
The fuller landscape this domain engages over time. Inclusion here does not by itself make a competency mandatory.
Core Outcomes
- Make thoughtful, independent decisions about money & value
- Understand & engage with economic systems & trade-offs
Key Competencies
- Personal finance (budgeting, credit, loans, investing)
- Contracts, leases, paychecks & other practical financial documents
- Taxes, filing basics & understanding simple tax obligations
- Cryptocurrency & emerging financial tools (optional / context-specific)
- Delayed-gratification decision-making
- Insurance, financial risk & protection
- Economic philosophies & schools of thought
- Trade systems & macroeconomic basics
- Economic history & societal impact
- Opportunity cost, trade-offs & value beyond money
- Entrepreneurial thinking & micro-venture creation
- Passion-project ledger & performance review
- International banking, currency exchange & travel budgeting
Evidence Examples
monthly budgets, investment journal, business-model canvas, trip cost sheets, etc.
How It Builds
Back-loadable domain. Early bands: delayed gratification, exchange, value. Heavy content (budgeting, credit, taxes) can be taught in teen years—but habits of self-regulation and tradeoff thinking build early.
Written for adults: developmental signals are prompts to investigate, not diagnoses or verdicts.
Early Childhood (18 months – 5 years)
On track
- Beginning to wait for things they want
- Understands basic trading
- Knows things cost money (even if abstract)
- Can choose between options
- Beginning to understand 'not now' ≠ 'never'
Worth investigating
- Cannot wait for anything; meltdown at any delay (often signals neurodivergence/anxiety/trauma—support, not blame)
- No concept of trading or exchange
- Cannot make any choice between options
What's building: Delayed gratification. Basic value/exchange. Self-regulation around wanting.
Middle Childhood (6 – 9 years)
On track
- Understands money as exchange medium
- Can save toward a goal
- Understands 'we can't afford everything'
- Makes tradeoffs
- Understands earning through work
- Beginning to share/give money (generosity developing)
- Waits for larger reward vs. smaller now
Worth investigating
- No concept of money having value
- Cannot save anything; spends immediately
- Cannot understand 'we can't afford it'
- No awareness different families have different financial realities
What's building: Money as tool. Saving. Tradeoffs. Generosity.
Late Childhood / Early Adolescence (10 – 13 years)
On track
- Creates and follows simple budget
- Understands interest (saving grows; borrowing costs)
- Distinguishes needs from wants
- Understands work-to-earnings (wage math)
- Aware things cost differently in different places
- Beginning to understand opportunity cost
- Can discuss family finances without anxiety (no need to share actual numbers)
Worth investigating
- Cannot budget at all
- No understanding of saving for larger goals
- Money purely emotional; cannot think rationally
- No awareness different families have different financial realities
What's building: Budgeting habit. Saving for goals. Interest understanding.
Adolescence (14 – 18 years)
On track
- Manages own money: budgets, tracks, saves
- Reads paychecks, bank statements, contracts
- Understands taxes enough to file simple return
- Makes informed decisions about big purchases
- Understands credit: how it works, how to build, traps
- Understands basic insurance
- Grasps supply/demand and prices
- Understands economic systems have tradeoffs
- Thinks about value beyond money
- Can move money across borders
- Distinguishes spending, saving, investing
Worth investigating
- Cannot manage any money
- Regularly signs things without reading or understanding them
- No understanding of credit or debt
- Cannot distinguish good deal from scam
What's building: Independent money management. Document literacy. Credit and tax basics. Value-beyond-money thinking.