When did you practice good personal finance?  What opportunities do you have to learn how to foster new personal finance practices?

Explore these questions and add evidence of your personal finance practices to this website.  Evidence can be documents, pictures, recordings, etc... from your courses, sports, clubs, or other activities completed outside of school.

There are four components when adding learning to your PLP. Please include: Title, Date, Reflection, and Evidence. Evidence can be added by clicking the (+) button in this layout. If you are adding evidence from Google Drive, make sure that you have the share settings set to "Everyone with the Link Can View."

January 2025

In advisory, we were able to choose a topic to explore related to financial literacy.  I really enjoyed this activity.  I focused on budgeting and completed the reflection in the slides.  I learned about the idea of loud budgeting, which was something that started on Tik Tok last year.

Date: Spring 2026

Reflection:

In Personal Finance class we got to practice completing tax returns for people.   I think I'll use software to do my own taxes in the future but it's helpful to know what goes into the calculation so I can look out for errors.  I know that I can go to irs.gov and find the tax tables.  One big thing to keep in mind is to be careful doing my W4 so that my employer takes out the right withholding for me.  Also, I know that if I have an employer and make less than the standard deduction I won't owe any federal income taxes at all.  This knowledge will help me to plan out my expected tax obligation in advance instead of waiting each year and possibly getting surprised by a big amount owed.  Also, I'd rather not have too much withheld because I'd rather earn interest on that money throughout the year. 

In Computers and Careers class I got to research a career.  I chose Landscape Architect because it came up when I used filters in a database called onetonline.  This career matches my Holland Code because there's a lot of hands on work and my code includes Realistic.  After all the research I realized it's not the perfect fit for me. I'm going to keep looking at different careers that include hands on work.  I'll also look for careers that have a high predicted growth rate because it's important to me to feel confident that there will be positions for me once I do the training and preparation.  This project helped me learn how to start by reflecting about myself and then use tools to search for matching careers.  I know that I can take the personality test and holland code test online again in the future.  I can also go back to the list of work values and skills and keep considering how those change for me over time.  

In Computers and Careers we learned about ways to learn after high school.  I found out that you can make really good money after fairly quick time if you go to trade school or do an apprenticeship.  For the most part, the jobs I'm interested in required college.  We usedt a filter called supermatch college search.  I put in a bunch of things about a school that I care about and it gave me some matches.  I pinned them so I could compare more easily.  The pinned schools are pictured here on the left.  I'll use this to talk with my family about going to see some of  these schools. 

Date:  Spring 2026

Reflection: In Personal Financial class we did a project where we picked a bank and looked at the savings accounts they offer.   I learned that some types of savings are locked in for a period of time and if you lock it in for longer you get more interest.  I also saw that you can get a money market if you have a pretty big amount to save, and that gives you the chance to withdraw and deposit a bit more flexibly.  I'll use this knowledge when I pick an account in the future.  Depending on where I'm at in life, how much I have saved, and how long it will be until I might need the money, I can pick the right type of account.