Life Skills
How to Learn Life Skills
Learning life skills is important for everyone. They help us to be independent, to take care of ourselves and to live successfully with others. There are many different life skills, and we all need to learn different ones at different times in our lives. Some of the most important life skills include:
1. How to manage our money and finances. This includes budgeting, understanding interest rates and investment options, and knowing how to handle debt.
2. How to take care of our physical health. This includes learning about nutrition, exercise, safety, first aid, and hygiene.
3. How to take care of our mental and emotional health. This includes learning how to deal with stress, anxiety, and depression. It also includes learning how to set boundaries, communicate effectively, and resolve conflict.
4. How to navigate relationships. This includes learning how to make and maintain friendships, as well as how to navigate romantic relationships. It also includes learning about consent, healthy communication, and conflict resolution.
5. How to be successful in school or at work. This includes time management, goal setting, and overcoming procrastination. It also includes learning how to deal with failure and rejection.
6. How to make decisions. This includes learning how to weigh pros and cons, how to consider different options, and how to make choices that are in line with our values.
7. How to be resilient. This includes learning how to cope with adversity, how to manage stress, and how to bounce back from setbacks.
Learning life skills is an ongoing process. We can always be learning new skills and improving upon the ones we already have. There are many resources available to help us learn these skills, including books, articles, classes, and workshops. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to learning life skills – we all have to find what works best for us.
Life Skills Resources
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens
Sean Covey's teen adaptation of the classic habits framework — goal-setting, prioritisation and personal responsibility, aimed at ages 12-17.
Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying
Barbara Oakley's bestselling learning-science guide rewritten for ages 10-17, teaching focused and diffuse thinking, chunking, and how to beat procrastination.
Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything
A short, 160-page distillation of Barbara Oakley's learning research, co-written with Olav Schewe — the fastest way into the material for an older teen.
I Want More Pizza: Real World Money Skills For High School, College, And Beyond
A short, teen-friendly intro to money skills that uses a pizza metaphor to teach saving, budgeting, and compound growth. Written for high-school and college students; a quick, actionable first personal-finance read.
Why Didn't They Teach Me This in School?: 99 Personal Money Management Principles to Live By
A concise personal-finance primer built around 8 principles and 99 practical money lessons — budgeting, saving, credit, and investing — for teens and young adults. A popular graduation gift and homeschool money-skills supplement.
Becoming a Freelancer
Knowadays' A-to-Z online course on starting and running a successful freelance business — finding clients, pricing, and managing the work. Self-paced, accredited, for adults and older teens.
Foundations in Personal Finance: Homeschool Edition
Dave Ramsey's flagship high-school personal-finance curriculum, adapted for homeschoolers — a print student text plus streaming video lessons taught by Ramsey personalities, covering budgeting, saving, debt, investing, and insurance.
Money Smart for Young People
The FDIC's free, award-winning financial-education curriculum for ages Pre-K through 12, with grade-banded lesson plans, student activities, and parent/caregiver guides covering saving, spending, and banking basics.
EconEdLink
A free K-12 library of more than 1,000 economics and personal-finance lessons, interactive activities, and videos from the Council for Economic Education — searchable by grade, topic, and standard.
Biz Kid$
A free, Emmy-winning financial-literacy platform built around the public-television series — videos, lesson plans, and activities that teach kids and teens how money works, how to save, and how to start a business.
Hands on Banking
Free, self-paced financial education from Wells Fargo for every age group — kids, teens, young adults, and adults — covering saving, budgeting, credit, and smart money decisions, with no login or sign-up required.
Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF)
A completely free, comprehensive personal finance curriculum for middle and high school — full courses, ready-to-teach lesson plans, interactive activities, and games covering budgeting, banking, credit, investing, and paying for college.