Taking Control of Money
Division III: Gr. 7-9
Money: Your Goals, Values, and Priorities
To achieve the things we want in life, we need to know what it is we want to achieve. We need to know what is important to us in terms of our values, what are our highest priorities, what trade-offs are we willing to make – and what role does money play in helping to achieve our goals. Helping youth to set goals, consider their values, set their priorities and develop a strong personal belief in their ability to set and achieve their goals is important.
Please Note: Teaching Units provided are for support and consideration by teachers and are not prescriptive.
Learning Map and Supports for Instruction
The “Learning Map” identifies teaching opportunities in Alberta’s curriculum for each topic and you will find them as part of the Support Teaching Materials provided here. Teachers can, of course, integrate the target areas of financial knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviours anywhere they can find a fit. The Supports for Instruction provide videos, animations, and links to other resources to support teachers in their efforts to improve the financial literacy of their students.
DownloadKnowledge
- Identify personal values and priorities in life
- Understand how our values can affect our money decisions
- Evaluate how important money and material things are in their life compared with other things (e.g., friends, family, experiences)
- Resources, including money and peoples’ incomes, are limited and so we cannot have everything we want and have to make decisions and trade-offs
- Every money decision we make involves a trade-off – giving up something else today or in the future
- Distinguish needs from wants
- Recognize needs and wants are sometimes difficult to tell apart and differ from person to person
- Set realistic, achievable goals
- Spending and saving decisions can be helped with a budget
- How a plan can help to achieve goals
- How to estimate the costs of running a household
Skills
- Consider personal values in making money decisions
- Track uses of their money to know where their money is going and how it is used
- Create a plan for achieving goals and adjust a plan if necessary
- Consider possible trade-offs, today and in the future, before making a decision
- Work with others to develop a plan and achieve a team task
- Consider risks when making financial decisions and explore ways to reduce or eliminate risk
Attitudes/Behaviours
- Reflect on their personal values when making money decisions
- Think about options and the trade-offs when they make a money decision – what they are giving up
- Consider the impact their money decisions may have on others
- Set realistic, achievable goals
- Work with a plan to achieve goals
- Alter plan as life circumstances change