PEM LIFE -- my REVIEW

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

Did you ever have a course in finances, spending, earning, taxes, investments, and related topics? Was it when you were in high school? I remember a brief unit on taxes, but not much more from when I was in high school. I do think that it is very important for students to learn through an academic course (as well as from their parents) about financial principles that they will need throughout their lives, and this course that we were able to use for review purposes, Personal Finance Illustrated, Homeschool Edition is an option for homeschooling families who are looking for such a curriculum. 

This curriculum is a broad-use curriculum that has been created by PEM LIFE and can be used by largely different audiences, ranging from high schoolers to college students to adults. As a homeschooling family, we have used a different financial literacy curriculum before and we were curious to check out this curriculum as well. 

PEM LIFE is set up to be used either as an instructor-led course or as a more self-study course. It is broken up into eighteen separate units which are to be used over the course of one semester (1/2 year.) The course has a Biblical base and there are references to God and the Bible throughout.
Lessons consist of video lessons, which are clear and understandable. 

There is a book that goes along with the course (an e-book, which was created by PEM LIFE) and students are told to read certain chapters to go along with the corresponding units.

 

There are interactive elements that students can use along with the lesson which help them to see how different factors can affect outcomes, such as if you have an investment at X% and you put in Y$, what will be the return. 

There are many types of responses, as well, ranging from written discussion posts (which if there were a lot of classmates, might be nice to use as interactions) to quizzes about the vocabulary and the content to essay writing prompts.

When the student completes assignments such as the discussion post and the essay prompts, an email is sent, saying that the item has been completed. When the student takes a quiz, their work is immediately graded and their score is entered into their gradebook. From the dashboard along the side of the webpage, the overview grade can be found, as well as the scores for different items. I'm not sure completely if the program will score/grade the discussion posts and essays for the student, but we did not see that happen in my daughter's usage of the course. 
My 16 year old daughter was the individual to use the course, and I had her use it independently, not with me teaching the lessons to her. She found it a bit unwieldy at first, to figure out what to do when, and I had to help guide her through a plan of how to move through the lessons. I do think that for a homeschool audience, it might be nice to have a clearer plan of expectations of what should be done when, on what timeline. As far as the content goes, it was pretty solid. I liked the topics that it covers, such as debt, expenses, investments, taxes, mortgages, and more. It is a well-designed course, nice videos and pretty graphics, and the interactive tools were quite helpful for showing what changes as other things vary. There were not many typos that I saw (okay, I included one picture just because I like corny funny stuff and this just struck me as silly: 

See why I think this is funny? :) 
You know, "with drawl" as opposed
to "without drawl" y'all! :) 
hahahahaha!! Okay, you are probably rolling
your eyes at me by now ;) 

 I think that this class might be a great idea for a college student or young adult. For my 16 year old, it was a bit involved or asked her to imagine just too much. For someone who is just applying for her first job other than babysitting, financial projections are a bit much. However, the tips about living on what you make and saving for the future, kind of a delayed gratification theme...definitely timely! I think I would hope for a little more emphasis on that type of thing at this age, although the time is quickly coming when she will need that other information.
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