NatYoung17 Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 Hello! I was wondering if a Personal Finance course can be used for Economics credit for HS? In Texas we need 0.5 credits for Economics to graduate and all the textbooks I looked at seem a lot more in depth than I was hoping. Since my kid will be doing a Personal Finance course ( Dave Ramsey) I was wondering if that would suffice? If she has to have Economics rather than just PF, do you have any book suggestions that cover enough to understand it, but don't take up too much time? Thanks so much!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BusyMom5 Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 No suggestions, but I do think there is a difference. Personal finance is teaching about budgeting, credit cards, things students will encounter in the next few years. Economics has more to do with the relationship between money, goods and services and how they work. They are related, but I wouldn't consider them the same and I think taking both would be great for any kid! 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bootsie Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 I would do the Great Courses Economics course videos with Timothy Taylor. You can do that without it taking too much time. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lori D. Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 (edited) No, Personal Finance and Economics cover different topics. Most 0.5 credit high school economics courses cover both Microeconomic and Macroeconomic topics. Agreeing with the previous poster's suggest about using the Great Courses lecture series for your Economics, which would leave you plenty of time to also cover Personal Finance. 😉 Personal Finance topics: Earning Spending Saving Investing Money Management/Budgeting Compound Interest Credit Insurance Macroeconomic topics Aggregate Demand Aggregate Supply Budget Deficits and Public Debt Business Cycles Economic Growth Employment and Unemployment Fiscal Policy GDP Inflation Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve International Economics Balance of Trade and Balance of Payments Barriers to Trade Benefits of Trade/Comparative Advantage Economic Development Foreign Currency Markets/Exchange Rates Microeconomics Competition and Market Structures Consumers Demand Elasticity of Demand Entrepreneurs Income Distribution Market Failures Markets and Prices Price Ceilings and Floors Producers Profit Supply Incentives Opportunity Cost Productivity Scarcity Decision Making and Cost-Benefit Analysis Division of Labor and Specialization Edited October 5, 2020 by Lori D. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
almondbutterandjelly Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 In Texas, your homeschool is a private school that determines your own graduation requirements, and therefore you do not NEED Economics to graduate. However, if you are like me, I look at the university's requirements and try to meet them. I did use Dave Ramsey and call it Economics. It is a sort of individual economics and I'm checking their box my way. It does cover production, consumption, and transer of wealth, but mainly by an individual person. We also touched on Adam Smith a little in our history book, so I was very comfortable calling our Dave Ramsey course Economics on my transcript. The university had no problem with it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theelfqueen Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 We really liked the Think Like an Economist Great Courses course. Also Crash Course economics is good. For my middle son, we did a combo of econ topics and personal finance. We used a combination of Whatever Happened to Penny Candy, A Bluestocking Guide to Economics, the Great Courses series above, John Stossels free videos and lessons, and Financial Fitness for Life from the Council for Economic Education. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemsondana Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 In our state we have to do both. We did Personal Finance over the summer, and used Life of Fred Personal Finance as our main book. We added a short book that was probably part of a stewardship program to address the topic of giving/generosity. The final book that we used was The Clipper Ship Strategy, which could probably be used as part of either Personal Finance or Economics. It was about starting your own business, but it talked about different economic theories as part of learning where you should start businesses and how to identify markets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NatYoung17 Posted October 5, 2020 Author Share Posted October 5, 2020 Thanks so much for all your suggestions, I really appreciate it! You ladies are the best ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BakersDozen Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 Whenever this subject comes up I have to jump in with a book suggestion! "Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25 and the American Dream". This book is a favorite with my dc/students! I think it did more for covering personal finances than anything we ever covered with Dave Ramsey, etc. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverMoon Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 Crash Course has workbooks available that align with the videos now too. We've ordered them on Amazon. My teen highly recommends The Cartoon Introduction to Economics volumes 1 and 2. I think everything else we used has already been mentioned. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theelfqueen Posted October 5, 2020 Share Posted October 5, 2020 Oh yeah, my Oldest (who had a degree in Econ) LOVES the Cartoon Guides and strongly recommended them for his younger brothers who.also really enjoyed them! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cintinative Posted October 6, 2020 Share Posted October 6, 2020 I didn't see this mentioned: ACDC Economics https://www.acdcecon.com/ His videos (free on Youtube) are engaging and entertaining. His materials are mostly for AP Econ. I used his videos to supplement Notgrass. I also used Glencoe Economics Today and Tomorrow (found it free online). My comments on Notgrass are in another thread. Basically, I felt like there was too much personal finance in Notgrass, and entire units (weeks) were spent on what the Bible says about money. That is useful, but again, more suitable to personal finance. Because several weeks were spent on that material, other concepts that I felt were important were not covered. So we ended up skipping several units of Notgrass and using Glencoe as a replacement those weeks. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frogger Posted October 6, 2020 Share Posted October 6, 2020 Marginal Revolution University has a good video course we have been using. It does have some math but so far just basic algebra 1 type skills. Mru.org 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ddcrook Posted October 13, 2020 Share Posted October 13, 2020 On 10/5/2020 at 11:40 AM, Okbud said: I'm designing a multi-year, integrated high school set of courses for which the through line is Economics, so I have A LOT of books to read right now. But I'll tell you that if you read Talking To My Daughter About Economics and the Uncle Eric book (Libertarian perspective) **or anything else with a contrasting worldview to Talking To My Daughter** and got some good output from them, demonstrating complete understanding, and then either watched some videos or read some "pop sociology" books about Economics like Undercover Economist or Doughnut Economics, you could have a really solid .5 Economics credit that would enable the student to begin to navigate real-world discussions relating to economics (so, like, nearly everything). I've just started poking around Notgrass Economics too, and it looks very good. One has to be a certain kind of student though, to translate this kind of textbook learning to real-world understanding. OTOH, sometimes you need to just get the credit. So whatever floats your boat 🙂 An alternative 'spine' for Economics, if you 'd rather go the historical angle of Economics (as opposed to the application, for example) could be A Little History or, perhaps, Naked Economics. DK has a good Economics book with encyclopedia-type entries. Really, I just want to encourage you! There's some really fun stuff available for Economics, and you can go really really deep into an aspect of it, or skip along the surface and move on, having a great experience with either route. It's a very malleable subject. Oh man! Thank you for all the suggestions. Just today I promised 8th grade dd that we would do more economics to cover her social studies credits. These books sound awesome! Dd may be interested in majoring in economics. I would love to hear more about the courses you are creating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ddcrook Posted October 13, 2020 Share Posted October 13, 2020 On 10/6/2020 at 5:58 PM, frogger said: Marginal Revolution University has a good video course we have been using. It does have some math but so far just basic algebra 1 type skills. Mru.org Ooooo! I'm going to start using their macro course with dd this week. Thanks for the recommendation! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlotteb Posted October 13, 2020 Share Posted October 13, 2020 My oldest daughter did Dave Ramsey's course for high school and I gave her an economic course credit. She's in full time college now and has had no trouble. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lori D. Posted October 13, 2020 Share Posted October 13, 2020 Not judging what anyone is doing, but just mentioning this in case it is of interest or importance to anyone else: the Dave Ramsey Foundations in Personal Finance course is all Personal Finance topics (as the course title says 😉 ). There are no Economic topics covered. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbollin Posted October 13, 2020 Share Posted October 13, 2020 (edited) On 10/4/2020 at 8:49 PM, NatYoung17 said: Hello! I was wondering if a Personal Finance course can be used for Economics credit for HS? In Texas we need 0.5 credits for Economics to graduate and all the textbooks I looked at seem a lot more in depth than I was hoping. Since my kid will be doing a Personal Finance course ( Dave Ramsey) I was wondering if that would suffice? If she has to have Economics rather than just PF, do you have any book suggestions that cover enough to understand it, but don't take up too much time? Thanks so much!! It varies where you live of course and what any specific college will care or not on that kind of category. Where I live and the cover school that signed off on our stuff, Ramsey was Personal Finance, but not econ. Economics as one of the social studies courses. It was distinct. but mileage will vary. If you are looking for ideas that don't take a lot of time and cover very basics of high school econ (this is not AP not honor. not clep prep, not take it from Sophia.org or Study.com in order to get your ACE credit applied at some colleges). This is basic of basics. Just need the workbook. author Kristina Swann, PCI Education. Economics. one source for purchase or at least preview is here https://www.wiesereducational.com/preview/economics-student-workbook-px1021wb-1588045188-9781588045188.htm It was very basic to cover semester in a light way. ps: I used just the workbook. There was a chapter review in each chapter that was enough for a "test" for me. But there is a teacher guide if you want that for a few extra questions and extensions to make it feel like "real" class. I used it with my youngest. By that point, you live, learn and LOL. (she's in a tech certificate program not bachelors program so it's good) Edited October 13, 2020 by cbollin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandy Hardin Posted August 13 Share Posted August 13 Would you count economics as A half credit , and personal finance as another half credit? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luuknam Posted August 15 Share Posted August 15 On 8/13/2024 at 2:55 PM, Mandy Hardin said: Would you count economics as A half credit , and personal finance as another half credit? Hi, and welcome to the forums. You don't seem to be quoting anyone in this thread (which is 3 years old, fwiw), so it's hard to know what exactly you mean. You might be better off starting a new thread unless you've got a specific question about something someone posted in this thread (and even then, some of the posters will have left the forum in the past 3 years). How many credits an economics or personal finance course should be depends on how involved those courses are. I gave my oldest 2 credits for econ - 1 for micro in 9th grade and 1 for macro in 10th grade (and he got 3 college credits each through CLEP). But for a 1 semester high school course 0.5 credits would be more appropriate, so, it all depends. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ieta_cassiopeia Posted August 17 Share Posted August 17 (edited) A good rule-of-thumb is that a course that takes 60-90 hours can be treated as 0.5 credits on the basis of time spent on the topic. A course that takes 120-180 hours can be treated as 1 credit on the basis of time. (0.25 credits tend to only get awarded for courses taken over a long period of time, for example a 1-credit art credit that happened to be spread over 4 years would be 0.25 credits per year). 90-119 hours would be 1 credit if the student worked quicker than expected and 0.5 if the student worked slower than expected - awarding 0.75 credits would be quite unusual, but might happen if, for example, a student was being careful to learn Algebra 1 thoroughly and took a little more than 1 year to finish (Year 1 would be 0.75 credit and Year 2 would be 0.25 credit. A plan would generally be created in this specific instance to either get the 4th credit of maths, or find a post-homeschool plan that didn't require it). Study that is intended to take 1 semester (at 1 hour/day) and cannot grant college credit is 0.5 credits on the basis of workload. Study that is intended to take 1 year (at 1 hour/day) and cannot grant college credit is 1 credit on the basis of workload. Courses that could grant college credit if taken as part of a degree (as in, they are courses run by degree-granting institutions and considered valid for at least one of their degrees) are usually double the credit amount of a non-college-credit course. Edit: That said, there is no rule that says you have to do a whole credit of both. It would be perfectly reasonable to do Personal Finance, then decide to do an introduction to economics that fits into whatever time is left over. If your student is not proposing to do economics as a degree, then even an introduction based on whichever concepts are of most interest will be beneficial. Consider something that builds upon the principles of Personal Finance, since part of economics is about the effects of many people handling their personal finances, in a zoomed-out way. It's useful to remember that economic systems are not simply abstract processes, but represent the effects of (a lot of) individual people. Core Econ has some materials that could work well with such an approach - particularly "Doing Economics" if your student is interested in computing and/or mathematics. This is because each exercise can be done separately (except that Project 1 is designed to be done first), allowing you and your student to pick that look the most interesting and explore their related concepts. Alternatively, consider looking for a GCSE Economics book, and working through however much of it happens to fit in. (GCSE is done by 10th-graders in the UK, typically alongside another 7-10 subjects. It is high school level, but won't be as demanding as the many USA high school economics books that assume they are being read by 11th- and 12th-graders studying 5-7 other subjects alongside it). Again, as a homeschooler there's no obligation to finish the book unless your student plans to major in economics. Edited August 17 by ieta_cassiopeia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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