Building Financial Resilience and Research Skills

This unit develops students’ ability to plan for, research, and respond to financial crises and life changes. Students analyze past crises and economic reports, evaluate safety nets and financial advice, build emergency savings and investing habits, and practice adaptive decision-making to protect financial and health outcomes.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze historical financial crises and current economic reports to identify at least three common causes and three indicators that could affect personal financial security.
• Evaluate federal, state, and community safety nets and design a personal crisis response plan that prioritizes emergency savings, appropriate insurance coverage, and access to support resources.
• Apply critical research methods to assess the credibility and potential conflicts of interest behind financial advice, compare at least two investment options by fees, risk, and expected return, and recommend an informed investing approach.
• Demonstrate adaptive financial decision-making by constructing a balanced spending-saving-investing budget with contingency triggers and revising it for two simulated life changes or crisis scenarios.