What Do Year 10 Students Really Want to Know About Money? Inside Our FinReady Workshop at Hunter Christian School

In February, we headed to Hunter Christian School in Newcastle for a FinReady workshop with Year 10 students. What we found wasn't a room full of disengaged teenagers. It was a room full of young people with real questions, and real dreams, waiting for someone to actually talk to them about it.

Year 10 students came in asking how to manage money. They left with SMART financial goals and a commitment to build better money habits. According to ASIC, 82% of Australian Gen Z feel financially stressed, and 69% say finances are their biggest cause of concern. This is more than any other generation. Workshops like this are part of changing that.

What They Wanted to Learn

The session opened with one question: “What do you want to learn today?” Some answers got laughs: "How to become a billionaire" and "How to become a boss like Elon Musk." But underneath the bravado was a genuine desire for financial independence. Most responses were grounded: how to save, how to budget, how to invest, how much to set aside each month.

The Goals They Set

Using the SMART framework, students set real financial goals. The most common? Saving for a car. Eight students wrote some version of this, with one planning to put away $500 a month to reach $8,000 in two years. Others aimed to rent a house, save $30,000, buy trade tools, or fund a Europe trip.

More than 60% of goals included a specific dollar amount and a time horizon. Students weren't going through the motions. They were actually planning.

What They'll Do Differently

The final Kahoot asked: “What is one money habit you'll implement after today?” Save, budget, invest, and save more, spend less came up again and again.

One workshop doesn't transform a teenager's financial future. But it plants seeds. Australia lacks a unified, strategic approach to financial literacy in schools, with under‑represented students most affected and disengagement particularly pronounced among young people.

If you would like to change that at your school, we’d love to hear from you! Book in your FinReady workshop today.