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Tools for Teachers

For years, teachers have used Money Math: Lessons for Life in core mathematics classes, helping to promote financial literacy among students nationwide. Why? With America's household debt reaching a staggering $13.6 trillion, it is important that we make financial education a priority, and provide our kids with the knowledge and skills they need to manage their money, stay out of debt, and save for retirement.

Money Math: Lessons for Life

Money Math: Lessons for Life is a four-lesson curriculum supplement for middle school math classes, teaching grade 7-9 math concepts using real-life examples from personal finance. The 86-page book is a teacher's guide with lesson plans, reproducible activity pages, and teaching tips. A teacher needs only one copy of Money Math: Lessons for Life to teach several classes of students.

Free to teachers, Money Math: Lessons for Life was developed by the Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in accordance with national school mathematics standards. The lessons were tested in Missouri schools and received rave reviews. Teachers need not be experts in personal finance to use Money Math in the classroom; questions and answers are clearly provided in the book.

A second printing of Money Math: Lessons for Life is now available. It is co-sponsored by a group of four generous partners who provided monetary grants and in-kind assistance to the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. Many thanks to:

  • Citigroup
  • Department of the Treasury
  • Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy
  • University of Missouri-St. Louis

For more information, contact us.


Download a copy of Money Math: Lessons for Life (PDF file, 3.13MB, uploaded 02/27/08).

Download individual lessons of Money Math: Lessons for Life:

Introduction and Correlations (PDF file, 225K, uploaded 02/27/08)
The Secret to Becoming a Millionaire (PDF file, 316K, uploaded 02/27/08)
Wallpaper Woes (PDF file, 210K, uploaded 02/27/08)
Math and Taxes – A Pair to Count On (PDF file, 293K, uploaded 02/27/08)
Spreading the Budget (PDF file, 326K, uploaded 02/27/08)

Some of these documents are in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF). Many computers include the Adobe Acrobat Reader, which allows you to view PDF files. If you do not have the Acrobat Reader, it is free to download and use. Find more help downloading.


More on Money Math: Lessons for Life:

  • Quotes from Teachers and Educators
  • Links to Personal Financial Education Resources
  • Slide Show Introducing Teachers to Money Math (PPS file, 525K, uploaded 02/27/08 - download the file and use PowerPoint or PowerPoint Viewer to view it); PDF Version (153KB, uploaded 01/05/2016)