About the Author
Charla McKinley
Charla McKinley graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in Finance. She went on to become a Certified Public Accountant with over 25 years working in both the corporate and private sector. While homeschooling her two children, Charla was inspired to write an interactive personal finance curriculum that opens the student's eyes to the high costs of being an adult. After retiring from homeschooling, Charla continues to teach teens live in Raleigh, NC and across the country using her Beyond Personal Finance curriculum.
Charla’s passion is teaching teens that their choices matter. She is a firm believer that in order to prepare teens for the road ahead they must be given the opportunity to practice making good (and not so good) choices using real dollars before they get out into the world and have real regrets.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Product Reviews 2021
Cathy Duffy writes:
"Beyond Personal Finance is a clever approach to teaching about finances. It goes further into the details of personal financial planning and decision making than do most other high school courses, and it presents scenarios that are based on common life experiences and decisions. Teens are likely to find this very interesting. The decision choices and plot twists used in the course make it more fun while reflecting the variability and unpredictability of real life."
The Old Schoolhouse Magazine writes:
Beyond Personal Finance is an outstanding product. As an adult, I wish I would have had real-life training through an enjoyable course like this. What drew me into choosing it for my child is the unique aspect of offering students opportunities to make choices and see consequences. This is done in a virtual "game of life" type format. For example, the student chooses a career and researches it to learn what education or training is required, what the job outlook is, how much it pays, and what will be expected in a typical day's work.
Product Review 2020
Lisa Nehring writes:
" While the Dave Ramsey course is excellent, it is really designed for adults who are in financial trouble and need a way out of that trouble. Most high school kids have a difficult time understanding what that could look like. Money is, after all, something most of them don’t have much of, think much about or struggle with. A benefit of Middle-class America is that our kids have their needs met and a good portion of their wants provided for, too. As a result, most teens have an abstract rather than concrete understanding of money. As one of the students in my high school class said, “Bills? I don’t have any.”
And that is exactly why Charla wrote this course. To give kids an idea of what kind of money questions and issues they will face as young adults and how to plan for, manage and think about the monkey wrenches that life continually throws in the way of all everyone out there “adulting.”"
