Making It Personal

This year, a new math course at Lyndon Institute is offering juniors and seniors a unique opportunity to apply their skills. Instead of more traditional fare—factoring polynomials, graphing equations, determining the area of a rhombus—students have been busy learning how to calculate compound interest, analyze mortgage rates, and handle budgets. 

For some students, Personal Finance is a regular math class; for others, it’s a valuable elective to supplement their other math studies. Either way, it’s designed to not only practice math skills but hopefully help students better handle some of the most important financial challenges they’ll face as adults.

“It’s long overdue,” said department chair Tim Ulrich, who pushed for the course. “We have been looking for ways to have students remain engaged with math for all four years, and what better way to serve kids toward the end of their high school math careers with a class that focuses on understanding the math of the everyday world of finance and the consumer?”

Ulrich and Personal Finance instructor Liz Vooris weren’t sure how popular the course would be when they announced the offering during course sign-ups last spring. To the department’s surprise, around sixty students signed up for the class, requiring three full sections.

For Vooris, who started working at LI last year, the class has been a fun way to teach a math course that resonates with situations that many of her students already find themselves dealing with outside of school.

“When I first came to LI, I noticed there had been a personal finance class in the J[anuary] Term curriculum at one point, but not recently, so that was something I was interested in picking up.”

Vooris, who had taught math at Northfield Middle and High School for seven years and completed financial literacy coursework at Champlain College, soon discovered that some people connected with the LI community, including Ulrich, had been pushing for a more full-time offering. 

One of those people was retired businessman and LI corporator David Stahler Sr. ‘65, who for much of his thirty-year tenure on the school’s board of trustees pushed for some kind of financial literacy program for students. After stepping down from the board four years ago, Stahler decided to push further, working with Vooris and Ulrich to advocate for the course.

“No matter what an LI graduate goes on to do, if they can’t manage money, they’re at a disadvantage in life,” Stahler said. “Many states are now mandating this kind of class in high school. I think it’s one of the most important things we can do for our students. Life is not just about making money—anyone can do that. Knowing how to manage it well is vital.”

Things came together last spring, and the class was green-lighted for a 2023 debut.

Vooris’s curriculum—provided in large part by Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit organization based in California—covers a wide range of topics. 

“We begin the year focusing on banking, including learning about the unbanked—people who do not use or may not have access to traditional financial services. We follow it up with a unit on investing. For some kids, it’s  one of the highlights. We run a stock market simulation, which is a lot of fun. Kids get pretty competitive about their portfolios and who can trade their way to the top spots.”

First semester ends with an in-depth study of credit—its value and its pitfalls, how to build credit and how to read a credit score.

“Students find it pretty shocking to learn about how people can be scammed through credit card fraud if they’re not careful. And how credit card companies can deceive people. We spend time studying the ‘Schumer Box’—the fine print companies put down at the bottom that indicates what kinds of interest rates and penalties consumers will be stuck with if they don’t pay their balances on time.”

Second semester brings a range of other topics—insurance, taxes, budgeting, and general consumer skills, like understanding identity theft and advertising. 

“There are a few challenges. Some of the topics we examine present concepts far off a student’s timeline, like retirement. Others, like buying groceries, are also a little foreign to their experience. But many of these topics are things they are either dealing with now—like budgeting and saving, or even paying taxes—or are things their parents or older siblings are going through—like buying insurance or leasing a vehicle—so they feel relevant.

“I actually find myself talking about my own life a lot,” Vooris added with a laugh. “I can draw from my own financial conditions and experiences and help make a lot of the material relatable.”

Observing one of Vooris’s classes, I got to see her use of Next Gen’s curriculum up close. A typical class starts with a “question of the day.” In this case, a statistics-based question about how many young Americans live with their parents. Students take a few moments to jot down their guesses before throwing out possible answers, which vary widely. Then the reveal, with the answers (56% of 18-24 year olds, 19% of 25-34 year olds) flashed on the screen, along with a graph that presents the changes in percentages over several decades, as well as separated by gender, showing more young men than women living at home with their parents.

“So what do you think?” Vooris asks the students. Some are surprised at how the statistics break down between the genders, others are surprised that the rates haven’t really changed that much over the past fifty years. A conversation about why young adults may still wish to live at home ensues, with some students offering examples from their own lives.

Next comes a video produced by Nex Gen focusing on home ownership and the question—”Should you own a home?” The well-produced video is thorough and funny and offers a balanced view of the positive and negative aspects of buying a house versus renting. Students take notes and Vooris stops the video from time to time to discuss a particular point or ask a question. A more thorough conversation follows at the end. 

“Does watching this video make you more or less likely to want to own a home?” Vooris asks the class afterward. Opinion is divided—many like the idea of owning an appreciating asset and the psychological value of knowing your home is your own; others are leery of the expenses involved beyond the mortgage itself and the whims of the market, especially in a time of high interest rates. Several cite their own family’s experiences both owning and renting.

The real highlight of class comes in the second half as the focus shifts from home ownership to the experience of renting. Students play through a scenario called “The Roommate Situation” in which they get together in groups of three—three strangers who are renting an apartment together and have to work out the terms, something many of them will have to do someday after leaving home or while in college.

They’re given an apartment with a list of parameters—the cost of rent and how it’s to be paid, the apartment’s physical characteristics and layout, features like utilities, insurance, parking, furniture, and entertainment. Then comes the next wrinkle: each roommate is given their own characteristics so students have a role to play. Roommate A has a time-consuming job that means he or she is gone a lot during the week, owns a car, has little debt but is forgetful with deadlines. Roommate B is a freelancer with an inconsistent income who works from home, has a lot of student debt, goes camping a lot on the weekends, and is a great cook. Roommate C is a first-year teacher with a lower income, will be gone much of the summer, is very organized and responsible but hates handling cash.

The “roommates” spend the rest of class working out their contract, negotiating over details based on their character’s circumstances—Who will get the biggest room? How will the rent and utility costs be split? Who gets the parking spot in the lot and who will be stuck with street parking? Because it’s just a scenario, the stakes are low, so students are free to decide how assertive (or not) they want to be.

These kinds of activities tend to be student highlights.

“Any scenario where they work together is a hit,” Vooris said. 

They may be scenarios, but they do a good job of mimicking real life and getting kids thinking about the choices they’ll need to make someday or ones their families are making now.

“I think most families don’t talk much about money, which is why a class like this is so valuable. But it’s important to have those conversations, especially now when kids are developing their spending habits. We talk a lot about differentiating between needs and wants.”

While the actual math skills covered are more limited and mostly computational compared to what students might study in a more traditional class, students get a deeper level of exposure to data analysis and statistics. And then, of course, there is the relevancy factor.

“It’s refreshing to not hear students say ‘When am I ever going to use this?’” Vooris said. “They understand pretty much everything we cover is something they’ll use and they find learning how to apply the math to solve these practical problems empowering.”

Applicability was a refrain that came up talking with several students taking the course.

Senior Talan Carpenter echoed Vooris. “People are always saying, ‘What am I going to use this for?’ And that’s never been a question I’ve heard in this class.”

Carpenter, who plans on majoring in history on his way toward becoming a teacher, was excited for the chance to end his math experience at LI with Personal Finance.

“I didn’t really know much about the subject, to be honest,” he told me. “Just stay away from credit cards! Now I have a much better grasp on things like what’s involved with paying taxes. In the future it won’t hit me out of the blue.”

His favorite moments from the class? “Learning about payday loans,” he said. “We played a game on the computer, a simulation where we were payday lenders pushing poor people to borrow as much as possible for as long as possible, then cranking up the interest rates. Man, those guys are sleazy!”

As a long-term member of student government, Carpenter also enjoyed learning about spending in the context of both the personal and the political. “We talked about government budgeting and the difference between mandatory versus discretionary congressional spending. It’s interesting to see how it compares to our own budgeting in terms of wants and needs.”

Fellow senior Landon Carey was excited to take Personal Finance for similar reasons.

“I wanted to leave high school with a little bit more direct knowledge regarding my future finances.”

Carey also has a more direct motivation—he’s interested in becoming an accountant some day and is planning on studying business and finance in college.

“My parents operate an insurance company, so it’s also been interesting learning more about the kinds of things they deal with,” he added.

Like Carpenter, Carey enjoyed the hypothetical simulated scenarios the most. 

“It was interesting playing with budgeting games. These are things everyone will have to deal with eventually, and it’s also just fun to play with money. My favorite was the investing simulator. It’s just a game, so you don’t have to worry about the outcome. But I’m very competitive, so it got a little intense at times.”

Carey appreciated the variety of topics he’s covered in Personal Finance and the way he’s been able to apply his skills. 

“You need to use math for budgeting. In the end, you have to crunch the numbers. This is preparing me for life. Once you get out of school, you’re on your own.”

Carey also wishes more kids would consider taking the class. “Personally, I think it should be mandatory. You’re going to have to deal with money. It’s just part of life. Death and taxes, right?”

Other aspects of the class have opened his eyes. “I’ve realized that a lot of young people don’t invest as early as they should. Even my parents have said they wish they’d started growing their money at an earlier age.”

The course has made him analyze his own spending habits in the context of saving. “I catch myself buying things all the time that I probably don’t need to. I work out at the gym and end up spending $3 to $5 on an energy drink or flavored water while I’m there. The other day I figured out that I could buy a whole twelve pack of the same drink in the grocery store for not much more than that.

“I also realized that when I pay with cash I tend to lose track of my spending. It’s almost as if I wasn’t really spending money when the cash disappears. It made me think about what I’d have if I put some of that into a savings or investment account.”

Head of School, Dr. Brian Bloomfield, is happy knowing that students like Carpenter and Carey are getting this kind of experience.

“I think Personal Finance is a fantastic course. Schools should offer practical experiences as well as opportunities for academic growth,” Bloomfield said. “We want our students to be prepared for life—that should be the mission of every school—and this class is an important step in that direction.”

Members of the broader Northeast Kingdom community are also excited by the school’s efforts to introduce financial literacy to a rising generation of consumers. Passumpsic Bank, based in St. Johnsbury, is sponsoring LI’s work and is in the process of developing a partnership with the school to both promote financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

“There is a distinct correlation between success and having a good relationship with money, and the earlier you start the better,” said Passumpic CEO Jim Kisch. “It’s really a package of life skills. We start kids when they’re little—opening a savings account, putting money away—but we often don’t go far enough beyond that, which is why I’ve loved the conversations we’ve had with LI and seeing how they’ve made this a priority.

“Everyone has a dream of what they want to accomplish in life, and strong financial literacy skills help you build those dreams, help you build something to work with.”

Beyond the Personal Finance class, Passumpsic is hoping to work with the broader LI community by offering a future “Shark Tank” event in which students are encouraged to develop their dreams for potential business projects and present their ideas to a board of local stakeholders, who in turn would offer feedback and perhaps even be willing to invest in helping students bring their ideas to life.

“It’s important for Passumpsic bank to appeal to students on their wavelength, to see where their interests and passions are, and respond. A ‘Shark Tank’ setting is a great place to vet ideas.”