Be Smart with Your Finances

Encourage students to think carefully about the many choices they can make with money!

This social studies book introduces options such as saving, spending, donating, and budgeting, while showing how each decision has both costs and benefits. Students learn how a savings account works, why giving can make a difference, and how planning ahead supports financial responsibility. The book explores the concept of opportunity cost to help students understand the trade-offs that come with every financial choice.

Be Smart with Your Finances

• Builds financial literacy and decision-making skills
• Explores the different ways to spend or save money and shows how each decision has both costs and benefits
• Includes a simplified bank statement with annotations to explain important features

Be Smart with Your Finances is part of the Knowledge Builders: Social Studies Readers series. This series introduces young learners to the world with high-quality nonfiction that is captivating and informative. Each book blends engaging text with striking primary source imagery and dynamic text features, allowing every student to connect with social studies content in meaningful ways.

| Encourage students to think carefully about the choices they can make with money through the important concepts explored in Be Smart with Your Finances. |

Eric Braun is a children's author and editor who has written dozens of books on many topics, including Make a Friend, Be a Friend and Be Yourself, Like Yourself for the Little Laugh & Learn® series and How to Take the ACHE Out of Mistakes and How to Take the GROAN Out of Grown-Ups for the Laugh & Learn® series. His books have won awards and honors including the Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, a Foreword Book of the Year Gold Award, a Benjamin Franklin Award, and many others. One of his books was read by an astronaut on the International Space Station for kids on Earth to watch. A McKnight Artist Fellow and an Aspen Summer Words scholar for his fiction, Eric earned an MFA in creative writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato. He lives in Minneapolis.