A 60-minute workshop for high-school students: three ideas that decide your financial life, one live game where you go from 15 to 55 in four decisions and about fifteen minutes, and a debrief that turns what happened into something you can actually use on Monday.
Everything in the session — the slides, the game and the debrief — teaches these and only these. Students meet each one three times: once explained, once lived, once reflected on.
A budget is deciding the gap on purpose, instead of finding out at the end of the month. In the game it is the green Safe to spend number.
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” Mr Micawber — Charles Dickens, 1850
Growth on growth, with time doing the work — which is why starting at 15 beats starting at 40. It runs the other way too: a credit card at 21% compounds against you just as hard.
“My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest.” Warren Buffett — Giving Pledge letter, 2010
Surprise bills never book an appointment. Spare cash is the difference between a bad week and a bad decade. In Australia, 43% of adults have less than $1,000 saved.
“Cash, though, is to a business as oxygen is to an individual: never thought about when it is present, the only thing in mind when it is absent.” Warren Buffett — Berkshire Hathaway letter, 2014
Designed for about 40 students in tables of four to six, with one device per table. No student accounts, no logins, nothing to install.
Three ideas, each with a short activity — a hands-up vote, a vote-with-your-feet prediction, and a four-corners scenario. Slides 4 to 13.
Tables live from 15 to 55 in four cycles — one per decade, each with one big life event and one surprise bill. You run the host board on the projector: it reads out each life stage, counts down, and holds the live leaderboard.
Ask the winning and last-placed tables what happened first, then walk each idea back through the game. Ends on three takeaways and three things to do this week.
Twenty-six slides with full facilitator notes and a time budget on every one. Structured tell-them, tell-them, tell-them-again.
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