How to Pay: Financial Literacy and Life Skills: Cash, Credit and More!

Do you want to equip your middle school students with important life skills and financial literacy? Here's a fun and engaging activity for you. This 8 page-booklet is ready to print and staple. Students learn about different ways to to pay for things, and they complete math and comprehension activities on each page.

This financial literacy lesson is designed to teach students in the middle grades or high school life skills classes about payment methods.

It covers:

• Cash: different currencies, coins vs bills, and countries that have eliminated pennies

• Debit cards: different accounts, using at a checkout or ATM, PIN codes

• Credit cards: limits, interest rates, minimum payments,

• Cheques: how to fill out, post-dating, bouncing

• Money orders: paying up front, added fees, differences from cheques

• New technologies such as Venmo, Apple or Google Pay, E-transfers, PayPal, and Cryptocurrency

Math skills required:

- Addition and subtraction of money

- Finding a percentage of an amount of money using a percentage written as a decimal

Each page has information about one type of payment: its rules and regulations and what it is commonly used for. Each page also has a math or comprehension activity for students to complete. Finally, there is a quick review on the back cover.

How to Use:

1. Go through each page with your class.

2. Allow your students to complete the activity on each page.

3. Have students do the review on the back cover.

Grades to Use With:

This lesson is designed for students in middle school (grades 6-9) or high school special education or life skills classes. Some intermediate math skills (adding and subtracting money and finding 20% of an amount of money) are required for a couple of the questions.

What's Included:

6 Page PDF:

Teacher Instructions

4 Pages which become an 8 page booklet

Complete Answer Key

This lesson goes well with my Credit vs Debit Card Handout CLICK HERE!