Basics of Retirement Investing

I taught my first class, Principles of Microeconomics, in Summer 2025. In the last two sessions of the course, I included a section on the basics of investing for retirement. I am passionate about financial literacy and education, and I shared some of what I have learned with my students to give them a baseline understanding. You can download this presentation here.

Despite Florida requiring all high school students to take a personal finance class, many of my students didn’t know what a stock was! They found this material both interesting and motivating for their own retirement planning.

My presentation assumes no prior knowledge of stocks, bonds, or investing. These notes are based on Dr. Brent Evans’s textbook, available at freefinancebook.com, which I highly recommend for more detailed information than what I include. I share this in the hope that it will be helpful or inspiring to others, just as it was for my students and for me.