Smart Tennessee utilizes the Financial Fitness for Life (FFFL) curriculum. This nationally recognized curriculum was developed for the National Council on Economic Education and is currently in use in many schools throughout the U.S. Financial Fitness for Life is

• A comprehensive K-12 program that helps students become skilled consumers, savers and investors
• Recognized by the Jump$tart Coalition as the best financial literacy curriculum, receiving its Soaring Star Award for excellence.
• Composed of four grade levels (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12) and includes student workbooks (storybook at K-2 level), parallel teacher guides and a unique set of parent guides for reinforcing responsible decision-making at home.
• Aligned with national teaching standards in math, language arts, economics and personal finance.
• Organized around five themes: earning an income, spending, saving, borrowing and managing money
• Completely activity-based at all grade levels
• Designed to help students apply economics and decision-making in an easy-to-understand style, using real-life examples.
• Supplemented by website lessons
• Is focused on teaching younger students how to manage money and make smart choices while learning to read, add and subtract; enhancing the middle school child´s growing awareness of the world with knowledge of how the world works; helping high school students make realistic plans for their futures.

Pocket Power is an enhanced learning system for personal finance economic education. It has 16 creative lessons that include:

• The value of an education
• The benefits of saving
• How advertising affects spending
• What credit means
• How to manage money

Steps to Financial Fitness contains 15 action-oriented lessons including the following:

• Understanding why income varies among individuals
• Differentiating between fact and opinion in advertisements
• Role-playing the buying and selling of goods and services
• Exploring payment methods

Shaping up Your Financial Future contains 17 activity-based lessons, featuring the following topics:

• Relating education to income and standard of living
• Cost of spending vs. saving
• Setting financial goals
• Effect of taxes on consumers
• The effect of simple vs. compound interest
• How inflation affects purchase decisions

Bringing Home the Gold contains 22 lessons, all action-oriented, which focus on:

• Evaluating career choices
• Making responsible spending decisions
• Applying for a job
• Using credit wisely
• Shopping for an auto loan

For more information on Financial Fitness for Life visit http://fffl.ncee.net/cur.php