Adulting 101: What FS Teens Need to Know—and How to Teach It to Them

Here are some things you can do now to help set up your Foreign Service teens for life after high school.

BY LAUREN M. STEED

Illustration of two parents helping a student carry a box of belongings into a college dorm.

ISTOCKPHOTO / OLEKSIIK

At the end of every college admissions cycle, as I sit with students to weigh their options and compare financial aid offers, I also have to walk them through one task that adults are all very used to, but which seems to mystify my teen students: multifactor authentication (MFA).

Where their parents may have been taught the importance of separating their laundry by colors, not getting in a car with someone who had been drinking, or balancing a checkbook, what today’s teens need to know before flying the nest is a bit different. Technical skills and financial literacy have taken on a new and urgent importance for the successful transition of Foreign Service teens to adulthood.

Basic Tech Skills

Yes, your teens are digital natives. Their hands have developed calluses exactly where their phones rest against their fingers. But while they can turn their dog’s photo into a meme, they often don’t know how to do basic things, like adjusting the margins of a document to match the requirements specified by the recipient. How can they learn this?

A great option, particularly if your teen is thinking ahead to getting a future office-based job, is to take the free courses offered at www.skills.google. Learners work through the modules at their own pace, earning badges to add to their résumé or LinkedIn profile.

Start with “Implement Cloud Collaboration and Productivity Workflows” and then move on through the 10-hour “Google Workspace Core Services” course to take nascent computer skills into a college-ready mastery of the day-to day-tasks done in Gmail and Google docs. There are also more complex, personalized tools like no-code app builders or Gemini they can use to design, enhance, or automate their creations.

Most of the teens I work with cannot really distinguish between the value of $1,000 and $10,000, and cannot connect either value to the labor, effort, or working hours represented by that amount.

If they’re angling for a summer-hire job in the mission next year, Microsoft’s learn.microsoft.com offers the same progression of skills, but specifically for Microsoft Office apps. The courses are free, but each certification exam costs $100–$400.

Before they head off to college or a gap year, make sure their phone is fully synced with their online personal calendar and email apps, and that they know how to sync to their future school and work accounts as well, so that they’ll never miss that important meeting with a professor or supervisor.

Money Value

In late 2026, the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) program introduced a new course and credit-validating test in “Business and Personal Finance.” In the marketing material for the new course, the sponsors cited declining employer confidence in student readiness for the workforce, and a perception that high school students are disengaged with their own futures.

From my own experience working with Foreign Service teens as they prepare for those same futures, I’ve seen some of that disengagement. But, perhaps particularly tied to their experiences as children in the Foreign Service, they’ve also exhibited a bewilderment about how money works.

They can hypothesize the economic effects of social policies or perform compound interest calculations in the context of a math class, but applying that knowledge isn’t as personal for them as it may be for a generation raised on cash, balanced checkbooks, and bills paid not by direct withdrawal but by monthly remittance of paper in the mail.

Don’t forget: Teens will still need to know how to use an actual paper checkbook.

Whether it is salaries and taxes, estimating both real costs and opportunity costs of their choices, or knowing how to differentiate between needs and wants, many fall short. Most of the teens I work with cannot really distinguish between the value of $1,000 and $10,000, and cannot connect either value to the labor, effort, or working hours represented by that amount.

So, other than sending them into the marketplace of adulthood with a mentality that credit cards can pay for anything and that money is magically deposited into their account each month, what are some things you can teach your teens now to set them up for life after high school?

Managing Spending

At one point, perhaps in despair that I hadn’t yet learned this lesson, my mother began to give me an allowance to cover not just my wants but also my needs. Other than meals that were shared as a family, I would have to use my allowance to pay for breakfast, school lunches, personal care items, clothing—essentially everything they wouldn’t be paying for if I didn’t live in the house.

Allowance for my own Foreign Service family now is more complex as we navigate local payment apps, local banking requirements, cash conversions, bank app age restrictions, etc. To help my teens see their spending, we track their income and expenditures in an app so they can follow the flow of their finances, even if they can’t always pay for things with their own account.

When your teen moves on to independent life after high school, you may still be sending them an allowance or paying their credit card expenses, but teach them to track and manage that spending using budgeting apps that sync with their bank accounts and preferred payment methods.

A life of transitions, varied friend groups, and exposure to different teaching and learning styles make FS kids significantly more willing to both fail and to try again than many other teens.

Consider Lunch Money or Spendee, both of which offer multicurrency support and are designed to work well even when the student has an irregular income stream and no investment portfolio to manage. These apps can connect to their bank account so they don’t have to manually enter transactions. Your bank may also offer an app that works, but be sure to evaluate its utility specifically for your FS student’s lifestyle.

Other financial apps teens will need to manage money are Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, and Splitwise. But these apps should be set up in a way that your teen won’t forget they have cash sitting in the app.

And don’t forget: Teens will still need to know how to use an actual paper checkbook. There are parts of the U.S. financial system that continue to rely on paper checks, the most notable being setting up direct deposit with some employers.

Your teen may also need checks to pay rent or at small businesses that do not accept credit or debit cards. While checks will likely go the way of the carbon-paper credit card imprinters in a decade or so, for now teens need to know the basics of filling one out and understand why they should never pre-sign a check.

Mandatory Basics, and Beyond

Virginia and 26 other U.S. states mandate that all students pass a class in personal finance before graduation. If your at-post high school doesn’t offer a personal finance class, your teen can enroll in an online course through Virtual Virginia or the remote school in your home state.

Many private online schools, including Hemispheres Academy (run by an FS family member), also offer single-semester or yearlong courses in personal finance. Look for an accredited provider to make it easier to qualify for reimbursement under the supplemental instruction allowance.

The advent of artificial intelligence and the significant social changes of recent years have made many more of my students interested in broader liberal arts and sciences fields.

Interested students can also look for courses that cover not just the basics but also explore investments, alternative currencies, and taxation. If they’re already at university, teens can seek support from, or train to become, peer financial counselors through the financial aid office.

Other financial realities to prepare them for include: recognizing credit card traps, protecting against financial scams and identity theft, taking advantage of side hustles and gig economy work, handling an emergency, and paying personal taxes to both the IRS and to the state where they live and work.

On the Plus Side

Though today’s FS teens may not be financially fluent, they have acquired significant skills that will greatly enhance their ability to build the future.

Confidence when talking to adults. The vast majority of teens I work with are ready to engage with adults on all levels of subjects. They can talk confidently about themselves and have a rather professional online presence.

I ascribe this strength to their regular exposure to adult social environments as part of the Foreign Service community, their higher-than-average levels of participation in speaking-focused activities like Model United Nations or debate club, and the smaller student bodies at international schools that give students more opportunities to participate and lead in both extracurricular activities and the classroom.

This confidence means our students are also significantly more willing to reach out for help from teachers or peers, a habit college professors and admissions officers recognize as critical to success for new college freshmen.

Virginia and 26 other U.S. states mandate that all students pass a class in personal finance before graduation.

Willingness to try something new or try again. A life of transitions, varied friend groups, and exposure to different teaching and learning styles make FS kids significantly more willing to both fail and to try again than many other teens. This growth mindset is a direct result of the International Baccalaureate’s curricular emphasis on becoming a risk-taker who approaches challenges with enthusiasm and confidence in a supportive, empathetic, and cooperative community of fellow learners.

Work-life balance. The high-stress college-bound culture of Northern Virginia schools notwithstanding, most of the FS teens I work with value a healthy work-life balance and make achieving that a basic part of their day-to-day choices. They recognize the signs of burnout and weigh the pros and cons of taking a gap year or choosing a post-secondary option that is not on the list of “Top 20 Most-Stress-Filled Colleges or Universities.”

Future-readiness. It may sometimes seem like they don’t have a clear enough plan for what they want to do with their life. They’ve got no clear major identified, no in-field internship lined up, but today’s students recognize that the future of work is somewhat of a mystery.

Ten years ago, many of my students applied into clearly career-focused majors like computer programming or business management. The advent of artificial intelligence and the significant social changes of recent years, however, have made many more of my students interested in broader liberal arts and sciences fields.

They are asking why people make certain choices and how we can shape the future to be better than today. Perhaps subconsciously, they are seeking those generalist skills in creative thinking, analysis, and problem-solving that are likely to be flexible and useful in the uncertainties of the future, regardless of technological or social change.

In other words, the kids are OK, and they’re about to show us all how awesome they are as young adults.

Portrait of a smiling woman with long dark hair wearing a brown blazer.

Lauren Steed, PhD, is an independent college consultant with more than 20 years of experience in postsecondary education and a Foreign Service family member. She is the author of College Conversations: 25 Discussions for High School Juniors and Their Families. She supports FS family members and other Americans abroad in the search for their best-fit educational options.

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