Life Skills Your Students Should Master – Part 1: Budgeting Basics [Episode 165]

Lauren 0:00
Hi, high school counselor friends. I am Lauren, I am your host of High School Counseling Conversations. Welcome back to another episode. So glad you’re here and tuning in. Whether you’re a new listener or you are a longtime listener, I’m glad you’re here.

Lauren 0:14
I’d love to read a review as we get into this week’s episode. So this review is from Jenna Nock, I don’t know if I’m saying that right. I never know, and I always have to laugh because Apple podcast names could be your real name, could be a fake name, could be just something completely made up from your middle school screen name. So who knows? Thank you, Jenna. I’m guessing that’s who this is. She says, subject line of her review, finally found a high school resource. She said, I’m a second year secondary counselor. I am so excited that I found counselor clique. I’ve been looking for a podcast that would give me quick tips in order to better my program and learn up to date ways of doing things. So I know Jenna has not been in this for super long to feel like she’s doing out of date things, but this is a relevant High School Counseling podcast that you are listening to. I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks Jenna for leaving that review. I always appreciate a review so that other high school counselors can find the podcast and enjoy listening to it as well.

Lauren 1:13
We’re in the business of prepping our students for life after high school, aren’t we? It’s funny, like we think we have ears that are hyper attuned to our student needs, their regrets, their level of skills and confidence as they launch into life after high school, and we hear them when they say things like, why didn’t they teach us about taxes? Why do I have to learn about geometry proofs instead of how to change a car tire? Like, I don’t know why we hear these complaints all the time, but I guess as counselors were privy to hearing them. I swear I heard these all the time. We’ve heard it before, but I could also get really defensive and say things like, listen, we tried to teach you useful things. You just didn’t listen, or you started skipping school because you had senioritis and you didn’t listen to us. If you would have listened, you would have heard us saying these things over and over again, and you would not be sitting here complaining with no life skills.

Lauren 2:06
I do think that counselors have a unique space to decide how we want to address some of the big mindsets and behaviors and help students with some real practical stuff before they leave high school. This makes launching our high school students so much different than elementary and middle school, like they’re just on that precipice of complete independence, and we’re kind of their last lifeline for teaching them those last life skills before they are truly a bit more independent than they’ve ever been in their whole lives.

Lauren 2:37
So I want to start a three part series. It was gonna all be in one episode, and then I thought, I’ve got too much to say. We’re gonna divide this up, where I wanna give you three different life skills to consider teaching your students before they graduate, and how they could practically flesh these out. So we’re gonna talk about one per episode.

Lauren 2:56
But before we get into those things, let’s take a look at the ASCA mindsets and behaviors. I’ll link those in the show notes. But pro tip, I love having these printed out, hang them by your desk, so that you can reference them really quickly and really easily. Because as you’re making decisions for your program, even in a really informal way, it’s really helpful to have these somewhere that you can just glance over at and think about them through the lens of, what is this lesson or small group or guest speaker or class meeting or school wide event? How is it helping me accomplish the mindsets and behaviors that are put in front of us? What are we trying to do? Is the event or the thing that we’re trying to put on going to help us reach our students with the things that we’re marking as really important?

Lauren 3:43
So these ASCA mindsets and behaviors give us a few different pathways to consider with our students, and help us think through our big picture goals, especially if we don’t know where to start, or we don’t know where to filter our energy. What’s that saying that people put on their desk? You only have 24 hours in a day, like same as Beyonce, same as everybody else, we’ve all got the same amount of hours in a day. So how are we going to use those effectively and efficiently? The ASCA mindsets and behaviors are our counseling standards, if you will, and those lay the groundwork for whatever goals we’re trying to achieve with our students. I think we can all agree that we want to see our students find success every year that we have them under our covering in K 12, but these specifically help us help them with college and career readiness, academic success and social emotional development, all three of our big umbrellas that we are trying to cover with our high school students.

Lauren 4:37
Let’s roll the intro, and then we’ll get into the first of the three life skills that I want you to consider helping your students master before they graduate, and I’m going to share with you some practical examples of how I would do it. And then also think through the lens of the ASCA mindsets and behaviors on how we should measure kind of what those goals are for our students.

Lauren 5:03
You got into this profession to make a difference in your students’ lives, but you’re spread thin by all the things that keep getting added to your to do list. I can’t create more hours in the day, but I can invite you into my counselor clique, where you’ll finally catch your breath. Come with me as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that’ll help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your students. I’m Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype girl, here to help you energize your school counseling program and remind you of how much you love your job.

Lauren 5:35
So first up this week, budgeting basics. Can’t we all look back and wish we had learned a little bit more about how basic budgeting, credit cards, loans, interest, all worked? I know, I guess I’m speaking from my own experience. I wish it was just more of a conversation in my household. I didn’t have anybody else talking to me about that outside of my household, and I remember it being a pretty private conversation in our house that like that doesn’t need to involve you. That’s too much information for you. You know, some of that was probably a little bit of protection over me, so it wasn’t something I needed to worry about as a high school student. But it also would have been helpful to have some of that knowledge and just see either the successes or the mistakes that my parents made. And that’s definitely something that I’m shifting in my parenting. We all live and learn, right?

Lauren 6:23
I wouldn’t expect high schoolers to have some deep knowledge and understanding of stocks and investing money, like that feels really far reaching if they don’t have money to invest yet, you know? But I think things like cash, credit, loans, those should all be at the forefront of their mind as they’re transitioning into young adulthood, or whatever their next season is like, wherever they find themselves. They’re moving into a season where that’s going to be important for them.

Lauren 6:48
Maybe they’ve had a part time job and so they realize the value of hard work and $1 and how many hours it takes to reach a savings goal that they set out for. And maybe they’ve had those savings goals with the security of living rent free in a home with parents who provide for them in a lot of other senses. The reality checks seem to come all at once when they’re suddenly responsible for a lot more than they’re used to. Now, this could turn into a complete parenting podcast episode, because I’m sure we all have thoughts and opinions on how to build that independence around money management if we were their parents, but we’re not. So let’s shift back into school mode and think about how we can make an impact within the school walls while we have them.

Lauren 7:29
I know it feels like we have to say something 100, at least 100 times before students actually hear us, and that it actually sticks. So what tiny things can we do now with great intention that can actually make a big dent for our students?

Lauren 7:43
Use your classroom face time for a basic budgeting lesson. Or something I loved to do was work with the senior economics teacher or a social studies teacher who’s doing a lesson like this anyway, where they were doing a project based on the reality of a future budget. You can pop in with that teacher, and you can add to what they’re already doing, bring in a different spin from the counseling side, and compliment their project or their lesson that they’re doing.

Lauren 8:10
Maybe it’s showing your students how to balance what’s coming in and what’s going out, and being able to measure and appropriately look at their income versus their expenses. That’s a very simple, very practical skill that we all need to have, and I think it’s a lost art, because we’re often not balancing checkbooks anymore. We’re just trying not to overdraft our checking account. I felt like that was what I was always doing. That was my measure of income versus expenses when I was just launching out of high school.

Lauren 8:39
Another thought is, if they’re college bound, or they’re still making some of their final college decisions, or you get them earlier than senior year, you can show them how to use that net price calculator that’s on every college’s website and what the breakdown actually means. I know it’s easy to say, in theory, every college has to have this on their website, but how do you use it? What does it mean, and what does that mean for me and my financial situation? So showing them how to access those resources and then how to use it and interpret it would be huge.

Lauren 9:08
If your students need some pen and paper reflection time, you can give them my budgeting workbook and that will help them reflect on some of their money mentalities that they’ve grown up with. That truly does shape how you view money as you move into young adulthood and beyond. Did your family operate from a scarcity mindset because there was never enough? Did you have to take on the position of independence really early because you came from a single parent household and you were told that you needed to start contributing? Or did you focus completely on school and not have a job until you graduated college and therefore never truly had to make decisions about money until later in life? All of these different pathways would frame how you view money.

Lauren 9:48
For us and for our students, it’s important to reflect on some of these money mindset questions. So not only are we teaching them practical skills as a counselor, but you’re using that counselor expertise, those counseling skills to dig a bit deeper and help them understand the why behind their money management and why this is all even important.

Lauren 10:07
While we’re here, can I give you a few more questions to reflect on personally yourself, and you could just take them right on into an individual group or classroom counseling session with students? I think that these can make for some really good conversation starters or some deep questions to journal or reflect on as you consider money and its impact on you.

Lauren 10:29
Can you think of anyone who handles their money well? Who is that? What do you respect about that person? How do you know they handle their money well? What does that mean to you, like how do you define what is well, and what is handling money well? Do you have any goals as it relates to money? And let’s think deeper than the goal being, yeah, just have a lot of it. Think about your values, or the values that you’d like to have in your life.

Lauren 10:53
I found when we would be sitting researching future careers, students were so focused on the job, the career that just made the most money. And then you get to the existential debate, would you rather be unhappy making the most money or just happy making enough money? And what is enough? That begs a real question to look introspectively and decide what is enough. What are your goals with money and with where you’re focused? How does money fall in line with those goals? Are there any habits that you need to change or mistakes that you need to correct right now in order to have your money habits align with what you say your values are.

Lauren 11:32
For this life skill, let’s pop on over to those mindsets and behaviors and see kind of what this skill would fall under. BSMS4, is a behavior, a self management skill, and that one is delayed gratification of long term rewards. If we were talking about setting goals and saving money in a lesson, this is one that stands out to me. I think this is a behavior and a self management skill that takes training, even as an adult, when I look at that and I relate it to money, I think this is something I’m still working on.

Lauren 12:06
BSMS1 is a behavior and another self management skill, number one, it’s responsibility for self and actions. This feels really all encompassing, but taking on financial responsibility for self and others requires thought and action. Being independent with finances is a huge step of responsibility, and with the right skills, our students can be sent out successfully into taking on this responsibility. Like, there’s no avoiding it, they’re gonna have to do it. It’s something that’s gonna follow with them for life. And so accepting that responsibility now and knowing, hey, we need to nurture these skills in order to be prepared and responsible for what comes next, I think is really important.

Lauren 12:47
I’m going to link the student budgeting workbook in the show notes, and I have these types of reflection questions, along with a financial aid literacy PowerPoint and a printable workbook for students to reflect on money mindset and to be able to start practicing some of those budgeting skills with a budgeting spreadsheet. We’ll be back next week for the second of the three life skills that your students should master before they graduate.

Lauren 13:10
Hey, before we go, would you mind sharing this episode with a counselor friend who needs to hear it? You may have seen my Instagram stories recently. I just have to share this funny story. Someone in a large Facebook group of high school counselors, shared something cool that they did in their school, and I publicly because I thought it would be more normal than sending them a message when they didn’t know me, I asked them if they wanted to be on the podcast to share it. And he immediately responded that it sounded like a scam, to which I just giggled all day, and I had to respond, nope. I’m just a person with a podcast. So I say that to say that not everyone knows I have a podcast for high school counselors. So you taking a second to send this episode to a high school counselor friend is the powerful word of mouth exposure I need to get these counseling tips into the air pods of more high school counselors. So I appreciate you stopping and doing whatever you’re doing right now to hit share with a friend and just send it in a text message to a friend right now. I’ll see you next week.

Lauren 14:08
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of High School Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you listen to your podcasts so that you never miss a new episode. Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me a DM @counselorclique, that’s C, L, I, Q, U, E. I’ll see you next week.