High school teacher Kelly Gregory spends a lot of time talking to kids like yours about money.
Her report on how youth feel about their financial future is alarming. “There’s all this fear with tariffs and the price of homes and the price of groceries and everything,” she said. “And I think they’re really feeling a little bit hopeless.
Ms. Gregory is trying to address these fears by teaching financial literacy to students at her high school in Kingston. Her experience is that talking about money helps students feel better about the future.
Parents, you need to be part of this conversation. Now more than ever, it’s important to talk with your kids about money and do your best to address their worries.
Schools are helping to teach financial literacy by including money-related content in courses such as math and careers. An assist from the new prime minister would also help. Can he offer something to build the optimism of young people about making their way in a world that for many seems forbiddingly unaffordable?
Ms. Gregory said kids are picking up messages about the unaffordability of life from all directions right now.
“They know how expensive things are, from food to clothes to postsecondary, and they’re not quite sure how they’re going to make that next step work,” she said.
In her teaching about financial literacy, Ms. Gregory finds there’s traction to be gained in personal finance basics like consistent saving and being a smart consumer of financial products. Her students have soaked up such ideas as getting paid interest on their savings, and avoiding the high interest rates on credit cards.
Conversations lately have included the trade war and the impact of tariffs on individuals and business. Ms. Gregory said some students hadn’t thought much about tariffs, but were suddenly firing questions at her after the subject was raised in class.
A lesson here for parents is to start conversations about money rather than waiting for your kids to ask. For her nine-year-old son, Ms. Gregory has set up a savings account where his $5 weekly allowance is directly deposited. That money is for saving – when her son wants to buy something, she encourages him to find ways to earn the money.
The financial curriculum in Ontario high schools is supposed to cover topics such as creating and managing a household budget, saving for a home and learning to invest. For the 2025-26 school year, Grade 10 students in the province will be required to pass a financial literacy test to earn a diploma.
Ms. Gregory had help in developing her FinLit material from Noah Booth, who at 18 wrote a book about personal finance called A Rich Future: Essential Financial Concepts for Youth. I interviewed Mr. Booth for a column back in 2023, when he was a high school student in Kingston. Now, he’s a student at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Mr. Booth’s contribution was to make money topics relatable to students. Ms. Gregory said she found the usual financial literacy content available to teachers was too theoretical and didn’t engage students. If any teachers want to connect with Ms. Gregory or Mr. Booth, they can do so at teachingfinlit.ca.
Students in high school absorb a lot of information that is retained only long enough to pass an exam or write an essay. But there are a couple of signs that teaching students about FinLit sticks in a way that cannot be said for other courses.
Ms. Gregory also teaches math, and she says that switching from algebra to FinLit in a classroom generates a massive increase in student engagement. Also, there are gratifying interactions with students after class.
“They’ll see me in the hall and ask me lots of questions,” she said. “And a lot of them report back to me. They come tell me their little success stories – they’ll say, ‘Ms. Gregory, I made a really good financial decision – I bought this thing on sale or secondhand instead of new and on impulse.’”
What do students learning about money latch onto the most? No, it’s not the wonder of compound interest, the importance of delayed gratification or the virtues of avoiding debt.
“I think it’s the hope that they will be okay,” Ms. Gregory said. “It’s the idea that they can make it after high school, when they leave the nest.”
Are you a young Canadian with money on your mind? To set yourself up for success and steer clear of costly mistakes, listen to our award-winning Stress Test podcast.
