Only 67% of American citizens had their families on a budget in 2019, even though 25% of Americans believe that everyone should budget. Nowadays, it is much easier to hope for the best than plan for the worst, but not planning your finances properly can impact you at every stage of your life. 

This is especially true for young adolescents leaving their homes for the first time and planning on taking out student loans. Thankfully, younger generations have taken an approach to the budgeting process that is much more productive thanks to financial technology. 

Let’s take a look at the importance of teaching your students financial literacy through education technology. 

Teaching Finance with Ed-Tech: the Benefits

Using education technology as a tool to teach financial literacy to students can fill in any gaps in knowledge that are not being addressed by parents at home. 83% of teenagers end up unable to manage their money due to the sheer lack of knowledge. 

Education technology can help students learn these skills in highly personalized and engaging ways, allowing them to learn at their own pace. We all know that finance can be a complicated topic that most kids and adolescents will find quite intimidating. Still, education technology can break the subject down into more manageable chunks. 

Because kids already have access to financial tech and digitals tools at home and school, they can feel more in control of their learning process. Likewise, teachers will also identify struggle areas quicker, allowing them to provide more targeted support to aid students on their learning journey.

Gamifying Education

Education technology can also be used to gamify finance, which will help with your students’ engagement and receptiveness as they learn. LMS (learning management systems) include games for the whole class to play together and a leaderboard that can be customized to let students earn points and win badges. 

You can also teach your learners financial literacy using digital apps. In particular, Celebrity Calamity is an entertaining app that taps into the love that children have for celebrities and the glamorous lifestyles they live. 

Your learners will be able to manage the budgets of their favorite celebs and try to keep them afloat despite their far-from-frugal spending. You could also opt for Bankaroo, a virtual bank app made for children between the ages of 5 and 14. 

The Importance of Financial Literacy

If students want to enter the workforce and succeed, they need to be prepared financially. Knowing how to budget finances is one of the essential skills that a working individual can have these days, and this skill must be taught from a young age. 

Going out into the real world with no knowledge of finances and how to spend money appropriately is a death wish, which is why it’s so important to prepare your learners with financial literacy. What better way to do that than with technology – the thing they’ve been surrounded by their entire lives. 

Concluding Thoughts

While we are still discovering all of the benefits that education technology has to offer, one certainty is its ability to promote financial literacy. With technology, teaching finances to your students never has to be a challenge again.