Teach high school students practical investing skills with this six-week Personal Finance Unit 4: Investing for Grades 9–12. Students explore compound growth, stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, retirement accounts, asset allocation, risk, and retirement projections through financial math, reading, data analysis, case studies, simulations, spreadsheet modeling, and argument writing.

Please note: This listing includes the Unit 4 student book only. The accompanying teacher resources support the complete six-unit, 36-week Personal Finance curriculum.

The 102-page student unit covers Weeks 19–24. Each week follows a consistent 11-part structure with reading, comprehension, vocabulary, 10 financial math problems, data analysis, case studies, hands-on activities, spreadsheet modeling, argument writing, review, and extension work.

Students begin with compound interest and examine how investment amount, return, and time affect future value. They calculate lump-sum and recurring contributions, compare nominal and real returns, apply the Rule of 72, and investigate how inflation affects purchasing power.

The stock-market lesson introduces bid, ask, spreads, market and limit orders, liquidity, P/E ratios, and market capitalization. Students participate in an order-execution simulation and calculate trading costs.

Students then compare ETFs and mutual funds, exploring index construction, expense ratios, tracking error, and capital-gains distributions.

The retirement-account lesson examines traditional and Roth accounts, 401(k)s, IRAs, employer matches, vesting, contribution limits, and early-withdrawal penalties. Students model retirement-account choices and evaluate employer contributions.

The risk-management lesson covers volatility, standard deviation, drawdown, asset allocation, glide paths, correlation, rebalancing, and sequence-of-returns risk. Students use simulations to see how different return sequences can produce different outcomes.

The unit culminates in a Portfolio and Retirement Projection Project. Students construct an asset allocation, build a retirement projection, state assumptions, convert projections into real dollars, examine withdrawal rates, conduct sensitivity analysis, identify potential shortfalls, and defend their conclusions.

Key activities include the Future Value Sensitivity Lab, Order Execution Simulation, Fund Structure Investigation, Retirement Account Modeling, Sequence Risk Simulation, and Projection Build and Panel Defense.

Teacher resources include a 167-page Teacher Guide, answer key, rubrics, six unit tests, vocabulary cards, 72 exit tickets, parent letters, progress monitoring forms, simulations, posters, certificates, and editable lesson plans.

Students develop investing knowledge, financial math, spreadsheet modeling, risk analysis, critical thinking, and evidence-based decision-making, aligned with CEE, Jump$tart, and applicable Common Core standards.