Welcome to the Mississippi Personal Finance Challenge ONLINE!
See what it's all about!
The Mississippi Finance Challenge is designed to recognize students who demonstrate high levels of personal finance skills and reward teachers for outstanding teaching practices in personal finance curriculum.
This is a fun and competitive way to engage students more fully in their learning while assessing how well they are meeting financial literacy standards. Personal Finance brings Personal Success.
Middle school (6th-8th grades) students gain an advantage by learning how our market economy works when you share personal finance topics in your classroom - add an element of competition and watch the incentive to learn increase dramatically!
High school (9th-12th grades) students are not required to take a consumer education/personal finance course in the State of Mississippi; however, financial literacy is necessary for success in the global workplace. The Mississippi Finance Challenge competition is the perfect way to engage students more fully in their learning and to assess how well they are learning the personal finance skills that will serve them for a lifetime. Consequently, teachers of various courses are engaged in the competition.
Teachers first register on the Finance Challenge ONLINE! web site. Additional step-by-step directions are provided.
Click here to access the Teacher Toolkit for addtional resourse to prepare your students!
Online Competition
The online competition includes accessible online testing, making it possible for every school in the state to participate. Teams of students, four students per team, take an online test of 30 questions. Entire classes are entered in teams of three or four (four is ideal). Teaching resources are available and there are no participation fees.
Middle school: Top-scoring teams from the online middle school competition advance to the State Finance Challenge in April 2025. Teachers are provided all the rules of the program in order to prepare students.
High school: Top-scoring teams from the online high school competition advance to the State Finance Challenge in April 2025. Teachers are provided all the rules of the program in order to prepare students.
State Championship Round
At the state competition, the student teams take a set of written tests and present a family case study to determine the finalists . The two teams with the highest team scores on three rounds of written tests advance to the final quiz bowl round, which concludes with the announcement of the First Place Team.
What do I do now?
-
Register—Choose "Teacher Registration" from the menu to the left to get started.
-
October 7-18, 2024 | December 2-13, 2024 | March 3-14, 2025- Personal Finance Challenge ONLINE! will be open for business. Test online once or during all three testing periods to increase your chance of winning. Click here to access the Teacher Toolkit for addtional resources to prepare your students.
-
March 2025- Winners are announced and invited to the State Finance Challenge.
-
April 2025 - Top scoring high school and middle school teams from each region will face off in the State Personal Finance Challenge in Jackson, MS .
-
TBA-National Personal Finance Competition Finals
Why Financial Education Matters
Did you know?
-
Approximately 40,000,000 Americans, “the unbanked” are not using mainstream, insured financial institutions
-
48 percent of credit card owners only pay their minimum monthly payment each month
-
According to the Federal Reserve Board, the average American household’s credit card debt is $8,565. In contrast the average savings rate is currently the lowest in U.S. history, 0.6 percent
-
Fewer than one in three Mississippi households have any type of interest-bearing checking, savings or money market accounts, ranking us next to last among states
Did you know?
-
Students entering college are offered an average of eight credit cards the first week of school
-
University administrators state they lose more students to credit card debt than to academic failure
-
College students borrowed in the 90s what they borrowed in the 60s, 70s, and 80s COMBINED!