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WealthWise Kids

Grades 9–12Ages 14–18 · Unit 4.1 · Your Income Life

Four ways to get paid: a free income worksheet for high school.

There are four ways to be paid and most students have had one of them described to them. This sheet puts employee, entrepreneur, investor and hybrid side by side and asks for the trade in each — because a high floor and a high ceiling almost never arrive together.

Download the PDF ↓One page · with answers · 30–35 minutes

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Preview of the Four Ways to Get Paid worksheet

What is on the page

  • Four income archetypes to complete across five columns
  • Where the money comes from, and what you trade for it
  • The ceiling and the floor of each
  • A written question on preference versus default

What it teaches

  • That income has types, not just amounts
  • The trade between security and upside
  • That hybrid income is normal, not a compromise

How to run it

Do not steer anyone toward entrepreneurship. The page exists to name the trade, not to pick a winner — and hybrid is the one most students have never had explained, though it is how a large share of adults actually earn.

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Where it comes from

Unit 4.1 · Your Income Life of a 266-lesson curriculum.

This sheet is one activity, unchanged, from Financial Foundations™. Teachers can run a free five-week pilot with one class. Families can take the Family Edition home.

For my class ›For my family