I’ve recently had the chance to review a personal finance curriculum geared toward home schoolers/private schoolers called “Triple 1070: Biblical Personal Finance.” It is a 13-week course incorporating biblical principles of stewardship into a textbook, workbook, cumulative tests, and a 6 DVD set that endeavors to create a reality-show about four young people touring America while learning about personal finances. Overall, I appreciate what Triple 1070 is attempting to do. However, this is not a blanket endorsement, as I will explain below.
From a “finance curriculum” standpoint, this series is essentially Dave Ramsey for teenagers, which I mean as a compliment. Dave’s been giving a lot of sound, financial advice for several years, and Triple 1070 has repackaged those principles into a format that is geared toward the “reality-show” generation. The name “Triple 1070” refers to the principle of saving 10%, investing 10%, giving 10%, and living off of 70% of your income. This can help to create an “emergency fund” with the savings, a plan for the future by investing, service to those around you through giving, and paying your monthly bills with the rest. Although this approach is not distinctively Christian, it does follow along well with principles of stewardship laid out in God’s Word.
The advice given to young people is to avoid debt if possible, pay off debt quickly when acquired, buy used instead of new, understand the laws that govern the economy, budget wisely, etc. As with all instructional aids we bring into our homes, we will find ourselves disagreeing with some details along the way, but overall, the Triple 1070 curriculum can provide some great opportunities for us as parents to enter into conversations with our high-schoolers, that might not have happened without provocation.
From a “production” standpoint, I think the DVD’s will be very successful. For all the emphasis we stress on the written word in our home, and for all the internal frustration caused to my inner man by even turning on a TV set, the reality is that when we go to grandma and grandpa’s house, the TV is on and the kids are mesmerized. Neil Postman ruined me, but perhaps if there’s going to be a TV around, we can put it to some productive uses. The production of the Triple 1070 “reality show” is very catchy. The jerky camera movement gives us old people fits, but for some reason that’s the way it’s being done now, and Triple 1070 does this at least as well as anyone else. The cast members are personable, respectful, and seem to genuinely care about the things they are learning. The advisors take principles that can be hard to understand and boil them down for the younger audience. I believe that if you use these videos and books to enter into conversation with your children about personal finances, this curriculum can serve as a catalyst and be of great benefit to your household.
For all of my “yays” there are a couple of “nays.” As I mentioned earlier, this is not a blanket endorsement. This curriculum is intended to be a “personal finance” curriculum as opposed to an “economics” or “history” curriculum, and Triple 1070 has tried to be faithful to that purpose. However, it would be nigh unto impossible to divorce the three entirely, and who would want to? When Triple 1070 moves from finances into macroeconomics, the content of the curriculum leaves much to be desired. Since the curriculum is endeavoring to present the economy from the perspective of “the way things are” as opposed to “the way they ought to be,” much gets taken for granted about the way things actually are. One example of this is in the chapter introducing the Fed. Without going into details here, the only source cited for the chapter is “History of the Federal Reserve, from federalreserveeducation.org.” This website is a product of the Federal Reserve and tends to be highly uncritical of itself.
One other “nay” concerns the “biblical” nature of the curriculum. Since that term can be taken in a number of viable ways, I want to be charitable here, but “biblical” in the sense Triple 1070 is using it is a reference to principles which can be found in the Scriptures, along with bible verses about finances pasted on the TV screen in between segments. When I see the term “biblical”, I tend to get excited about exegesis, so their use of the term resulted in a little disappointment for me personally. This curriculum is nothing like a bible study, but once again, it could be used as a catalyst to get your children to ask some deeper, biblical questions than they may have asked otherwise. Then the exegesis can come from you or another teaching aid.
My recommendation would be that the Triple 1070 Personal Finance Curriculum should follow our children’s initial study of free market economics, rather than being that introduction. If you’re interested in using this curriculum, use it after your student has solid instruction in Austrian macroeconomics rather than before. After all, this is “personal finance curriculum,” not an economics course.
Here’s a link to their Facebook page.
Here’s a link to the company that produced it.
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