“Why didn’t they teach us this in math class?” How many times have we seen a social media post from a friend, family member, or even former students with this general sentiment? These posts can be frustrating to hear as a math teacher, and my first instinct is often, “We do teach it! You probably just didn’t pay attention!” However, the frequency of these posts eventually led me to wonder, can we do a better job making connections between the classroom math skills and real world scenarios? Of course I’ve taught the basic: write an equation for Annie buying $0.50 apples and $2 candy bars, but that’s not why former students are complaining. They want real financial math!. They want to know what is being deducted from their paychecks, how to pay their taxes, and what does 100/300 BI mean when they are researching auto insurance. 

Thanks to a generous grant from ICTM, Bettendorf High School was able to purchase textbooks and offer a new math course this year focused on financial literacy- with a mathematical approach rather than economics or social studies. In this course, we practiced Algebra II standards as we explored price comparisons and finding good deals through frequency tables and normal curves. We practiced budgeting using a 50-30-20 model and classified daily purchases into essentials, lifestyle and savings categories. One student appreciated the early education, stating that our units on “budgeting and saving will help you a lot in the real world without having to learn these things after you messed up already.”  Students learned some background on FICA taxes and how to calculate what should be withheld from their paychecks. Another student shared, “Financial math helped me so much with my job. I can better understand why money is taken out of my paycheck and exactly where it’s going. The budgeting activities were also a huge help and I was able to translate them to my own money.” Other units explored health insurance premiums, auto insurance coverage, and credit scores. We wrote algebraic expressions and performed calculations, but we also listened to guest speakers from the financial industry and learned a great deal of vocabulary. 

One of the biggest successes that I took away from teaching this course was the huge increase in student buy-in. I made the ambitious claim during the first week that we would learn math that they would want to know and would use outside the classroom, and I think we were able to meet that goal.  One student commented “Before taking this class I had no idea about how to build my credit at all, let alone buying a house. I have learned so much through taking this class and compared to other classes, the things I've learned have stuck with me.”  As educators, our goal is to prepare our students to be successful outside of the classroom. I believe that Financial Algebra is a great step toward meeting that goal.