14 Free Financial Literacy Worksheets PDF (Middle & High School)

Check out these free financial literacy worksheet PDFs for middle school and high school students to learn all about money.

We all know that getting money into kids’ and teens’ hands so that they can learn how to use it through trial and error works.

I mean, that’s how many of us learned how to manage our money, right?

But prepping kids and teens with financial literacy worksheets PDFs and games is a great addition to their financial education.

It’s sort of like having a teen first study and then pass a written permit exam before they’re allowed to drive a car.

Practice and prep make sense.

Use these financial literacy middle school worksheets pdf and high school financial literacy worksheets below.

Hint: you also might want to check out these fun money activities for middle school students.

What Financial Literacy Subjects Are We Talking About?

It’s helpful to know what’s included in a subject so that you can cover all of your bases (or know that what you need covered, will be).

The financial literacy worksheets and PDFs below are going to fall into the following topics:

• Banking
• Budgeting
• Saving Money & Setting Money Goals
• Loans and Credit
• Earning Money

Let’s dive in.

Psst: You also might want to have your students journal about how they feel about money with these journal topics for kids – it helps them figure out how they feel/what they think about money, and it can help you to understand what they do/do not know about the subject.

Financial Literacy Worksheets PDF – Banking

Banking is super important in any adult’s life, which is why I created an entire article around free banking worksheets (PDFs) for kids and teens to learn banking skills.

You know, things like:

• How to write a check
• How to make a deposit
• How to shop around for the best banking services
• Differences between a bank and a credit union
• Etc.

But I want to share one here, too.

1. Building Your Future Book 1: Establishing a Foundation

Suggested Age: High School

Book 1 covers how banking actually works, what a checking account does that a savings account doesn't, how compound interest quietly does the heavy lifting, and where credit cards fit.

The worksheets are interactive PDFs, so students can fill them in on a laptop and save their work rather than printing a class set. Free, no signup.

Financial Literacy Worksheets PDF – Budgeting

Budgeting is one of the most critically important financial literacy subjects to cover before a student gets their hands on a real paycheck from a real job.

That’s why I’m dedicating this next section to free financial literacy printables all about budgeting.

Psst: here are 6 budget projects for middle school students, a free prom budget template, and 4 budgeting projects for high school students.

1. How to Be a Smart Consumer

Suggested Age: 4-6 grade

Check out this video, lesson plan, and student worksheets around helping kids understand how to be smart consumers.

For example, kids will be asked:

• Whether or not it’s best to buy something now or later, given a scenario
• To design an advertisement for a brand of sneaker
• How to calculate discounted items (based on a percentage off)

2. CFPB’s Budgeting for a Rural Trip

Suggested Age: 13-19 years

Students are given a budget of $500 and the task of budgeting for an overnight trip, 100 miles away.

They’re asked to fill in things like Breakfast for each day, lunch for each day, activities and events planned for each day, etc.

Teacher guide available for free.

Psst: you might want to reinforce needs vs. wants with these worksheets, activities, and games.

3. Dallas Fed’s Owning Vs. Renting

Suggested Age: Not given

What a great financial lesson to teach students: the costs of renting vs. the costs of owning a home.

Students will learn about:

• Landlord and tenant relationship
• Rental agreements
• Effects of owning on your net worth
• Responsibilities and risks of being a homeowner vs. renter

Worksheets include:

• Lease Agreement
• Examples of Housing Discrimination

4. Practical Money Skill’s Living On Your Own

Suggested Age: 7-8 grade

In Lesson 4, you’ll find worksheets that guide students through listing the things they have in their bedrooms and estimating the cost of these items.

Then, they need to budget for their first time living on their own.

They’ll also be guided on lease agreements, and how to find an apartment!

5. Money Prodigy's Is It Worth It?

Suggested Age: 10+

The phone, the concert tickets, the shoes – it's the same question every time, and “can I afford it” isn't actually the right one. This walks a student through what they'd be giving up to say yes, which is the question that changes behavior.

Reusable, so it works as a one-off lesson or as the thing you hand them every time the asking starts.

Psst: Worksheets teach the thinking. Games make it stick. That's why I built Avalanche: The Money Decision Game – your group gets $20,000 and has to summit Everest with it, drawing situation cards along the way. Make a poor call, and you trigger an avalanche. Five avalanches and the climb is over.

What makes it work is the thing most money activities are missing: real consequences. Good decisions open up options later in the game, bad ones close them off, and the kids figure that out themselves without anyone saying it out loud. Ages 8 to 18.

Psst: here are 12 fun budgeting activities PDFs, all free, and some consumer math worksheets.

Financial Literacy Worksheets PDF – Saving Money & Setting Goals

Here you’ll find some great free PDFs all about helping kids to understand how to save money and how to set money-saving goals.

1. FDIC’s Money Smart Worksheets

Suggested Age: 3-5 grade and 6-8 grade

This is an entire money curriculum from the FDIC (the people who insure our savings accounts), for various grade ranges.

The worksheets on saving money and setting goals include:

• Lesson 6: Super Savers (the Importance of Saving)
• Lesson 7: How to Stash Your Cash (Savings Options)
• Lesson 12: Spend, Save, or Give? Personal Financial Choices

Complete with educator and parent handbooks to download for free.

2. CFPB’s Impulse Spending Worksheet

Suggested Age: 16-19 years

Here’s a worksheet that corresponds with an online free financial literacy game, Misadventures in Money Management.

Students will play this game first, then answer questions about the character’s impulse spending decisions. They’ll then learn some strategies for beating their own impulse spending, well, impulses.

Pssst: looking for more online financial games for students? Here’s my article on 19 free financial literacy games for high school students.

Next up are entire workbooks around financial literacy subjects (instead of just a one-off worksheet or two).

3. Money Prodigy's Savings Goal Kit

Suggested Age: Middle and high school

Here's the gap I kept running into: students can explain why saving matters, and still have absolutely no idea how to run an actual savings goal. “Save more” isn't a plan.

This one walks them through the three parts that make a goal stick – naming what they're actually saving for, breaking it into a number they can hit each week, and tracking it somewhere they'll genuinely look at again.

It pairs naturally with the impulse spending worksheet above. That one shows students where the money is leaking out. This one gives it somewhere better to go.

Financial Literacy Worksheets PDF – Earning Money

Earning money is a major part of financial literacy…because without money, you’ve really got nothing to manage!

This section will focus on free financial literacy worksheets and PDFs on understanding paychecks and other forms of earning income besides a 9-5 job.

1. Understanding Your Paychecks

Suggested Age: High school

One of the worksheets in this free workbook that you can download individually is about reading a paycheck and understanding what everything means. Students will then answer some questions about what the paycheck says.

2. It’s a Job Getting a Job

Suggested Age: High school

You don’t just walk out of high school or college and stumble into your first (or next) job. There’s a process to getting a teen's first job.

These videos, teacher guide, and worksheets have teens thinking about:

• How to interview well
• How to best search for a job
• How economic conditions can affect the job search market

3. Money Prodigy's Online Job Tracker

Suggested Age: High School

Once a teen starts applying, the whole thing falls apart in the same place every time – they can't remember where they applied, when, or who to follow up with. This tracker gives them one page for all of it, which is the difference between “I applied to a bunch of places” and an actual job search.

Pairs with the two items above: those explain how earning works, this one is what they use the week they start.

4. Dividend-Paying Stocks (and the Rest of Investing)

Suggested Age: High school

Personally, I think it's super important to teach students that there are ways to earn money outside of your job.

And buying into dividend-paying stocks? Is one of those ways.

Pssst: I didn't learn about these until well into my 20s…imagine where your students could be if they learn about this in their teens!

This one is a full four-chapter workbook from the same Building Your Future series as Book 1 above, so it goes well past dividends:

• Investing basics – including how inflation quietly eats savings, and how to think about risk
• Bonds, and the difference between the primary and secondary markets
• Stocks – fundamentals, earnings, dividends, and how to track the market
• Mutual funds, and matching investments to an actual goal

For more worksheets about careers and jobs, check out the 19 free career exploration activities for high school students.

Financial Literacy Workbook PDFs

Looking for an entire, printable financial literacy workbook (PDF)? You’re in the right place!

These are all free for you to print out and use with your students.

1. Money Prodigy's Bill Pay Budget Project

Suggested Age: High school

This is the one that turns abstract into real. Your student gets a set of actual bills and has to pay them from a set income – rent, utilities, phone, groceries – and discovers on their own that the numbers don't always work out. That's the whole lesson, and it lands harder than any amount of explaining.

It runs across several days rather than a single class period, which is why it sits with the workbooks instead of up with the standalone sheets.

While actually getting money into a kid's or teen’s hands is the most ideal way to teach kids and teens about money, prepping them through worksheets and games is a great way to supplement a financial education.