re: Financial Life Skills - Developing a class

If you are truly targeting the underprivileged and not just average/middle class, then you need to be quite a bit more basic with the concepts. Start with unit pricing, household budgeting, how to read a pay stub, an explanation of income taxes and withholding. You also need to know something about TANF/food assistance (how much per person in a household, how it gets credited, what it can be used on). IOW, meet your audience where they currently ARE, rather than preach from on high about how they should be managing their finances.

If you’re trying to help a low income person to make rational economic choices, it undermines your credibility to not have basic knowledge about the things they face. How much does a bus pass in your area cost? Childcare, cost of a gallon of milk at a store accessible via public transportation?

I’d add a unit on micro-entrepreneurship: how to make money in small, easily achievable ways. Assuming that your target audience has housing w/functioning kitchens, you can provide some examples of food entrepreneurship (tamale making is a time honored thing in certain communities, or baking birthday cakes/cupcakes), or childcare (accessible to teens), or hand-weeding flower beds, housecleaning, sitting with the elderly, etc. Use those concrete money-generating examples to go through a simple case study on how to start, build, and operate a business. (This is what Junior Achievement does with kids.)

I think you have a great list of topics to cover. My suggestion is to gear specific classes towards different age groups. There's a great need of financial advice for high school and college age individuals, but there's just as many in the work force and in retirement that could use financial advice.

There's a family offering financial classes at a local church that is similar to what you are planning to do. It's been a great benefit for those in the community.