National Standards for Financial Literacy

This personal finance manual provides a framework for teaching personal finance in kindergarten through 12th grade.

The National Standards for Financial Literacy provide a framework for teaching personal finance in kindergarten through 12th grade. A student who masters the knowledge embodied in the standards should be able to avoid making poor financial decisions, understand the economic reasons behind the trade-offs between financial choices, and know the basis for their own decisions. The standards contain the areas of knowledge and understanding that are fundamental to personal finance:

• Earning Income
• Buying Goods and Services
• Saving
• Using Credit
• Financial Investing
• Protecting and Insuring

Each of these six standards includes benchmarks outlining what a student should be able to understand and examples at the 4th, 8th and 12th grade levels of how the student might demonstrate this understanding.  The benchmarks also emphasize decision-making skills by explicitly relating planning and goal setting, financial decision making, and assessing outcomes to each standard.