Financial Security and Protection

This unit builds on foundational financial concepts to strengthen students’ ability to protect and grow personal wealth through risk management, consumer protection, and long-term planning. Students will learn practical strategies for investing in difficult markets, preventing and responding to fraud and identity theft, and creating basic estate and retirement plans while applying critical evaluation of offers and everyday spending choices.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze investment opportunities and portfolio risk during economic downturns by comparing risk-adjusted returns, diversification effects, and historical scenarios to recommend appropriate strategies for varying risk tolerances
• Apply identity-theft prevention and fraud-response protocols in simulated incidents, including credit monitoring steps, account freezes, reporting procedures, and remediation actions
• Demonstrate preparation of basic estate and retirement plans by drafting a simple will, explaining trust and beneficiary designations, and projecting retirement savings needs using baseline retirement analysis tools
• Evaluate consumer offers, potential scams, and everyday discretionary spending decisions using news-literacy techniques, skepticism heuristics, and budgeting trade-offs to align spending with financial goals