Teaching Financial Literacy to Young Adults

[Nghi Le]

I want to hold a series of workshops on Financial Literacy for the kids at my youth group, and I wanted to ask you guys for some advice on how I should go about it. We have kids from ages 7-20, and youth leaders ages 18-30. It's hard to generate interest for the young kids, so I thought about focusing on the ones that are about to graduate.

I'm aiming to have 3 separate sessions/workshops:

1. Basic workshop for kids about to enter college and/or current college students. Some topics I had in mind: 
   - financial aid and school loans
   - how interest and inflation works
   - how credit works
   - what you should (and shouldn't) do when you turn 18
2. Cashflow Game Night: Play the game and then discuss lessons learned. For all ages.
3. Advanced workshop for the kids and youth leaders about to graduate college or are in the early stages of their career. Topics (might actually need to break these out into more sessions/workshops, depending on interest):
   - buying a car
   - buying a house
   - different types of investments
   - retirement
   - wealth creation strategies

I don't plan on going into any of these topics really in depth, although I'll always have a Q&A session after each topic. I can give them additional resources or have one-on-ones for those interested in learning more. I also don't really plan on focusing too much on real estate investing, just general financial education. They all know what I do and can ask to have a 1:1 with me on that. I'm also afraid that if I start talking about real estate, my passion might come out, and they might get so excited and decide they don't want (or need) to go to school anymore, and then I will get angry calls from parents and the parish... haha :-)

What do you guys think of the current list of topics? Have you already done something like this before, and if so, would you mind sharing some of your teaching materials?

Also wanted to get some thoughts on what kids these days should do when they turn 18 to set up their financial future.