Your Next Chapter™ · Combined Course
One course. Both requirements.
One story.
Your Next Chapter™: The Economy and Your Financial Life is the full-year course where economics and personal finance are taught as a single subject — and a student's own financial plan becomes the economy they learn to read.
A 1.0-credit course, built for Michigan. Your state's edition on request.
How one course counts for both.
Michigan requires a half-credit of economics and a half-credit of personal finance. Beginning with students who entered 8th grade in 2023 — the Class of 2028 — the Michigan Department of Education permits an economics course that includes the personal-finance content expectations to count as one full credit. This is that course: a genuine economics course, built to strands E1–E3, that also delivers all seven MDE personal-finance expectations. It doesn't thin either subject to fit — it teaches both, interwoven, across a full year.
MCL 380.1278a · Public Act 105 of 2022 · MDE Personal Finance Course/Credit RequirementsIt delivers both, honestly.
MCL 380.1278a(3) is explicit that the economics half-credit cannot be satisfied by the personal-finance course. This isn't that shortcut — it's a full economics course that carries personal finance alongside it, so both credits are earned in full.
The finance half still frees an elective.
As with the standalone course, the personal-finance credit substitutes for a half-credit of math, visual/performing/applied arts, or world language — the district's choice. Total credits stay at 18.
Credit is proficiency, not seat time.
Students earn the credit by producing real work — their own financial plan, read as an economy — not by logging hours, exactly how the Michigan Merit Curriculum awards credit.
Why it's one course, not two back-to-back.
Michigan put personal finance inside its economics standards, then required it separately, then permitted the merge. The standards interleave — so the course does too.
Price it, then pay it.
A student prices a market in one unit, then walks into a store with that lens in the next. Personal finance asks "can I afford this?" Economics asks "who decided what this costs?"
Earn it, then keep it.
They compute what a job actually pays after Michigan's income tax, then follow the same dollar into a budget, a credit decision, and an investment — one continuous chain.
Neither is the sequel.
In a blocked year, whichever subject runs second reads as the add-on. Interwoven, neither is the parent — and the capstone is the proof.
Standards crosswalk
Built to the Michigan Merit Curriculum economics strands E1–E3 and all seven MDE personal-finance content expectations (PF1–PF7).
| Unit | Focus | Standards |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Scarcity, Choice & the Cost of Everything | Economics | Market Economy |
| 2 — Markets: Why Things Cost What They Cost | Economics | Market Economy |
| 3 — Spending with Intention | Personal Finance | PF2 Buying Goods and Services |
| 4 — The World in Your Cart | Economics | International Economy |
| 5 — Your Story, Your Income | Personal Finance | PF1 Earning Income · PF7 Paying Taxes |
| 6 — The Government's Hand | Economics | Market & National Economy |
| 7 — The Economy's Vital Signs | Economics | National Economy |
| 8 — Money and the Machine Behind It | Economics | National Economy |
| 9 — Building Your Foundation | Personal Finance | PF3 Budgeting and Saving |
| 10 — Borrowing Wisely | Personal Finance | PF4 Using Credit |
| 11 — Growing What You Have | Personal Finance | PF5 Financial Investing |
| 12 — Protecting What Matters | Personal Finance | PF6 Protecting and Insuring |
| 13 — The Big Picture, Your Chapter | Capstone | Synthesis · E1–E3 + PF1–PF7 |
Economics units map to the Market, National, and International Economy domains of the Michigan Merit Curriculum; personal-finance units map to MDE's Appendix A. Full expectation-by-expectation crosswalk available for your curriculum committee.
Thirteen units. One plan, read as an economy.
Six economics units, six personal-finance units, and a capstone that is neither — sequenced so each one answers the one before it. Every unit builds one real file.
Unit 1 · Economics
Scarcity, Choice & the Cost of Everything
Builds: The Trade-Off File
Unit 2 · Economics
Markets: Why Things Cost What They Cost
Builds: The Market Map
Unit 3 · Personal Finance
Spending with Intention
Builds: Spending Values Map
Unit 4 · Economics
The World in Your Cart
Builds: The Trade File
Unit 5 · Personal Finance
Your Story, Your Income
Builds: Income & Career Snapshot · Tax Worksheet
Unit 6 · Economics
The Government's Hand
Builds: The Government File
Unit 7 · Economics
The Economy's Vital Signs
Builds: The Economy Checkup
Unit 8 · Economics
Money and the Machine Behind It
Builds: The Money Trail
Unit 9 · Personal Finance
Building Your Foundation
Builds: First-Year Budget
Unit 10 · Personal Finance
Borrowing Wisely
Builds: Credit & Debt Strategy
Unit 11 · Personal Finance
Growing What You Have
Builds: Investment Starter Plan
Unit 12 · Personal Finance
Protecting What Matters
Builds: Risk Protection Checklist
Unit 13 · The Capstone
The Big Picture, Your Chapter.
Students take the plan they built across the finance units — income, budget, credit, investing, protection — and run it through the six economics lenses they built alongside it. Then the question the whole year has been building toward: what would have to change in the economy, not in your discipline, for this plan to get easier? They don't finish with a grade. They finish with a plan they understand as an economy.
Five life-transition tracks — chosen on Day 1.
Students pick one track on Day 1, and it becomes the lens for every personal-finance decision across the year — income, budget, debt, and investment assumptions all reflect their path.
College
University or community college: tuition, loans, housing, part-time work.
Career Launch
First full-time job: benefits, first apartment, first car, 401(k) decisions.
Skilled Trades
Apprenticeship: earn while you learn, union benefits, tool costs.
Entrepreneurship
Your own business: variable income, self-employment taxes, startup costs.
Military Service
Enlistment and active duty: base pay and tax-free allowances, the Blended Retirement System, and benefits few 18-year-olds know how to read.
Built for Michigan, not relabeled.
Michigan law and Michigan numbers, taught in both halves of the course — everything else pointed at the student's own community by design.
Michigan tax, computed for real.
Unit 5 uses Michigan's 4.25% flat income tax — flat by constitutional requirement — plus the local income tax levied in 24 cities. Take a job in Detroit and 1.2% comes out whether you live there or not; live in the city and it doubles to 2.4%.
No-fault insurance, as a real decision.
Unit 12 teaches Michigan's no-fault PIP system as it works after the 2019 reform — students choose the coverage level that fits their situation, not a generic buy-insurance lesson.
Two Federal Reserve districts.
The Lower Peninsula sits in the Seventh District (Chicago, Detroit Branch); all fifteen Upper Peninsula counties are in the Ninth (Minneapolis). Unit 8 teaches the Fed with Michigan's own map.
A durable-goods economy.
Michigan unemployment hit 16.5% in 1982 and 14.3% in 2009, against much lower national rates. The business cycle in Unit 7 isn't abstract — it's the state's own history.
A USMCA trade profile.
Roughly two-thirds of Michigan's goods exports go to Canada and Mexico, transportation equipment leading. Unit 4 reads global trade through the state's own supply chains.
Made-in-Michigan indicators.
The University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment, produced in Ann Arbor since 1946, is a national leading indicator students can actually follow — and Unit 7 does.
Built by a practitioner, not a curriculum company.
Mark H. Johnson · CFP® · AEP® · CEPA® · CDFA® · BFA™ · JD · MBA
Founder of Reviresco Financial Planning & Wealth Management in Monroe, Michigan, Mark has sat across the table from clients working through every financial mistake this curriculum is designed to prevent — and read the economy those mistakes happened in. Every unit is built around decisions your graduates will face within five years of graduation, and the forces that shape them. Not hypothetical, not textbook. Real.
Proof you can take to your board.
Every licensed district receives structured outcome reports per cohort: a pre/post knowledge assessment built for the combined course — ten Michigan-defined questions spanning both economics and personal finance — plus statement-level verification that the economics strands and all seven MDE personal-finance areas were delivered, and capstone proficiency, completion, and teacher-satisfaction rates. At year's end you'll have a documented record of what students completed, what percentage produced a proficiency-level plan, and how much their knowledge grew — the evidence base for renewing the license and reporting to your board.
Bring the combined course to your district.
Currently built for Michigan — we'll build your state's edition on request. Full pricing is on the Michigan page.
Request the Michigan Sample Unit