case study personal financial planning (continued) project presentation

14 Personal Finance Project Examples & Ideas

By: Author Amanda L. Grossman

Posted on Last updated: May 24, 2023

Want to introduce a money project to your students? Check out these personal finance project examples for middle and high school.

Every so often, I find a fun and interesting personal finance project example that I think should be passed on so that other educators can use it.

So today, I thought it’d be helpful to highlight them all in an article (that I update periodically with new ideas and examples as they come to me).

You can use these to round out your financial literacy class with an overall project due at the end of the semester, OR, squeeze one of these projects in for students to work on mainly at home if you don’t have a dedicated fin lit class.

Perhaps you are into project-based learning, and one of these could be the perfect anchor to your entire semester.

There’s lots of uses!

Personal Finance Project Examples

Below, you’ll find a mix of actual personal finance project examples from real classrooms and schools, as well as ideas for money projects that haven’t been done before.

I hope you get inspired.

Mr. Brennan’s Personal Finance Project

This teacher has created a personal finance project geared towards financial independence that accounts for 20% of his student’s grade in Economics.

Students are tasked with making a budget, finding an apartment, filling out a rental application, looking into utilities, meal planning, and all the things that go into getting that first apartment on their own.

He’s got a Part II, with tons of lessons around the theme of Staying Within Your Budget.

Project-Based Learning Finance Project

What a cool idea – in this PBL, students meet different families (adults pretending to be clients) and see what their financial needs and desires are.

They interview them to find out more about their lives, and what they’re looking for. They also get a printout of their financial situation.

It’s like they’re playing financial planner (in fact, the teacher had a financial planner come in to talk about her job and go through examples)!

11 Personal Finance Projects from Atlanta Fed (PDF)

The Atlanta Fed has this great resource with 10 different personal finance projects to use throughout the year (rubric included).

And…it’s available for free!

Author Julie Kornegay suggests that you have students complete 10 projects, with each being worth 20 points. Have them create a three-ring binder with each of their projects, and make it a large part of their final grade.

Working through each of the following projects will give your students a financial strategy to take with them:

• Expense tracking
• Setting financial goals
• Balance sheets and cash flow statements
• Creating a budget
• Credit reports
• Purchasing a vehicle
• Saving and investing for the long term
• Important financial documents
• Retirement savings
• Insurance inventory

Hint: she also gives several tips for how to keep everyone feeling safe doing these projects – since they’ll be sharing sensitive information at some point.

Youth Cash Transfer Program

40 students inside Rooted School Indianapolis were chosen to receive $50/week, for 40 weeks (adding up to $2,000 in total).

And here’s the kicker: they’re allowed to spend it however they’d like.

Talk about a bit of a fish bowl experiment, where teens can practice both receiving money and spending money without huge real-world consequences.

To be honest, I’m following this study because I want to see how things turn out ( researchers are going to be monitoring and studying the results of this program ).

Build a Classroom Food Pantry

Here’s a school that allowed a student to create and run a food pantry (as part of his Eagle Scout service project)…and now it runs continually as a grocery store experience for students that helps the community.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information on this. But, could be a great project to develop at your own school now that you have the idea.

Psst: Want more? Don’t forget to check out these budget project for middle school students , and budget projects for high school students.

Mr. Saulino’s Personal Finance Webquest Project

If you’re in Mr. Saulino’s Social Studies course, then you’ll be completing a project called Personal Finance Webquest.

Each student pretends they are 22 years old, and they have $7,000 in their savings account to spend, or not spend, as they wish.

Students are required to stay within their budget while accomplishing the following:

• find an occupation
• set up and maintain a budget based upon your income
• rent and furnish an apartment or purchase a home
• purchase a car
• set up an investment portfolio

There are links provided in each section to help guide students in finding the information they need to complete their tasks.

Personal Finance Culminating Project

One teacher found her students were super bored with personal finance topics, so she decided to change things up.

Students need to pick 5 topics from a big list, and write a brief post about them (150-300 words) or a podcast summary.

Written pieces were posted to a classroom blog, and the quiz for the unit was for each student to read 5 others’ blogs, and summarize what they learned.

Apparently, this was quite the hit!

Included in that article are the Personal Finance Culminating Assignment, and Investigations Rubric.

Gen Z Money Project

Based on CNBC’s Millennial Money video series, this high school teacher developed an after school personal finance project where students plan what their life looks like at age 30.

Students complete a:

• Futures Thinking Activity
• Personal Values Activity
• Vision Board Activity
• Budget and Salary Activity
• Career Activity

And then students presented everything using Google Slides presentations.

Do you have a market day at your school? You know, where students come up with an idea for what to make or do in order to sell it to either their peers, the community, etc. on a Market Day at the school?

While it’s not entirely a personal finance project – it’s got more to do with entrepreneurship and running a business – I still thought it was worth mentioning here.

I've got an article on  22 Simple Market Day Ideas , and it's gotten a lot of attention.

My Pet Plan Project

Most kids, at some point, want to own a pet.

Take this desire, and let them learn some critical money lessons with it.

Have each of your students come up with a plan for buying and maintaining a pet for six months.

They get to decide things like:

• What type of pet to buy
• Where to buy their pet
• What accessories to purchase
• A feeding plan for their pet with costs

My First Car: The First Six Months

Many tweens and teens are looking to buy their first car in the coming few years.

But, how exactly are they supposed to do that? What are the steps? What are the estimated costs?

Then, how much does it cost to run their new car for the first six months?

You can also have them do things like calculate the cost of buying a new car each year for three years, versus paying one off and riding it another 7 years (also, opportunity costs).

Here's how to save up for a car as a teenager .

Buyer’s Remorse Project

Have your students save each of their receipts for one month leading up to this project (you can hand them a special envelope to remind them to do it).

When one month is up, have students do things like:

• Fill in a spending ledger
• Look at the totality of their spending over the entire period
• Divide it up by needs vs. wants
• Figure out percentages spent on needs vs. wants
• Figure out satisfaction for each purchase
• Categorize by days of week/types of stores to pinpoint/open their eyes to some of their spending habits
• Go through a tradeoffs exercise
• Run through a lesson on money values – shuffle anonymous sheets up and hand them out to ask others what their satisfaction level would be for the various spending (to find out that everyone prioritizes and values their money differently)
• Have them read through these 7 smart ways to spend your graduation money

Ask students things like “why might someone else’s buyer’s remorse not be yours? Did you have more buyer’s remorse when it was your money spent, than looking at how someone else spent their money? Why do you think that is?

I hope I've inspired you with some of these personal finance project examples. And I'd love to hear your own – please share in the comments to help other educators with ideas.

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Case study: Personal financial plan

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Case Study – Financial Planning

Peter (42) and Jane (39) have 2 children, Becky (12) and Richard (8). Peter is an Insurance Underwriter for a Lloyds syndicate, and Jane is a Partner at a City Law firm. Their joint income is over £200,000 per annum.

Pensions : They each have several pensions from previous employments, including a defined benefit pension, a stakeholder pension, and several personal pensions run by insurance companies. Peter has now been auto-enrolled into a new scheme at work.   Jane has nothing in place.

Investments : They each have savings accounts, investment ISAs, Premium Bonds and Jane has a small inherited share portfolio.  

Insurance : Peter has some life cover from work, Jane has nothing in place. Jane used to have sick pay from her law firm but lost all benefits when she was made Partner last year.

Other : They own their house which is worth £710,000 with a mortgage of £500,000. They had not made Wills.

Key Objectives

• Plan for university fees for the children
• Move home when Becky goes to university
• Take control of our investments – no idea how they are doing
• Understand our pensions and plan for retirement  
• Pay less tax!  

The Financial Plan

We first gathered all relevant personal and all possible information on their current financial situation using our online forms. This included, all sources of income and detailed expenditure, all assets and liabilities. We researched their existing plans and policies by obtaining written authority from Peter and Jane to speak to the providers directly. Our technical team complied a report outlining the charges, income options and investment choices of the current pensions ready for our next meeting.

We also asked Peter and Jane to spend some time to refine their objectives, putting values and dates to each where possible e.g. how much do they want to spend on the new house? And when do you want to retire, 55, 60? – and then what monthly income would they like to have?  

Review Meeting

We met again to discuss the objectives, and the suitability of the current plans and policies to best achieve the objectives.  

We built a Cash Flow Model (CFM) that included all assets and liabilities, and critically all future known cash flows in and out of the household, to give a holistic view of their financial situation throughout their lives.  

Advice and Implementation

The Cash Flow Model (CFM) highlighted how much additional annual cash they would need to save each month from the earnings to achieve all of their objectives. We then advised exactly where to place this cash to maximise their returns.

We were able to restructure and consolidate many of the old pensions, reducing administration costs and significantly improving the investment management of the underlying portfolios. They each now have clarity as to what their pension benefits are worth and receive quarterly reports on the performance.   Jane now funds her new scheme on a monthly basis. Peter uses his new scheme to invest his annual bonus. We also obtained a tax rebate for Peter as he had not claimed higher rate relief on one of his old schemes.

We restructured the existing cash and investments, again reducing admin costs while adding a joined-up investment strategy to allow for university fees to be drawn down at the right time, as well as a capital sum in 6 years for the house move.    

Our mortgage team worked through options for different options for borrowing, to give an idea of how to approach the sale and purchase, including how much capital we will need to plan for from the investments.

Both Peter and Jane now have life cover written into the correct Trust for the children, as well as a lump sum on critical illness. Jane also wanted to provide ‘private sick pay’ for herself.

We now complete their tax returns which took a load off both of their minds, and also referred them to an excellent Solicitor to have Wills drafted.

Pete and Jane now have peace of mind that their financial objectives are not only achievable but that they are on track. We simplified their plans and policies through consolidation, while reducing the excessive risk of their investments through superior investment management.  

We will send quarterly updates on their investments and meet with them every year for updates on their financial situation and objectives. We can then also retest, and restructure as required to keep them on track.  

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No guarantee can be given that the information provided is accurate in the present or the future. It is not intended to constitute either a statement of applicable law or financial advice, and responsibility cannot be accepted for any subsequent loss following activity or inactivity by any individual or organisation. Indeed, such information should NOT be acted upon without first receiving appropriate and specific professional advice.

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