My Richmond Fed: Making a Decision About Life After High School

Exploring options for life after high school can be overwhelming. What lifestyle do I want? What education and career path is right for me? How will student loans affect my future? It might seem like there are more questions than answers. But our work at the Richmond Fed can help students like Zion make a decision about what path to take after high school through programs like Invest in What’s Next.

Invest in What’s Next is an interactive, online mini-course from our Bank’s Economic Education group and our colleagues in San Francisco. The program is designed to build students' economics and personal finance skills while preparing them to make an informed decision about post-secondary education and careers. Through personalized exploratory activities and guided research over three lessons, students create an actionable plan for their future. Students can weigh the costs and benefits of their education investment and see how their plan might respond to real-life challenges, such as earning less than expected or starting an education path but not completing it.

Since preparedness is an important factor for completing an education path, students will take a Preparation Assessment to evaluate how prepared they are. They answer a series of questions and get tips on what they can do next. Students can freely build additional plans through the Plan Builder to explore a different school option, job choice or education path. Then, they can compare plans to evaluate which one is the best fit.

Want to learn more about Invest in What’s Next? Contact our Economic Education team.