Introduction

Choosing a career is a major decision in your life. It will determine how much money you make and how you support yourself. Your career path will also determine how you spend a majority of time as an adult. Making the best decision you can is essential to your overall happiness.

One of the problems that you will solve is to answer this Essential Question:

"How can I make money AND spend it?"

Which occupation would you choose?

Task

Choosing the right path is not always easy.

  1. First you will research one of the careers below using the online career choice website. Using the site you will take the online assessment to help you see what career you would most enjoy. Then you will choose the career that appeals most to you. Based on your choice you will answer the questions on the Career Research Sheet.
  2. After investigating your career you will investigate what to do with your new income. Choosing what or what not to buy is not always easy so you will plan a budget based on your new income and the type of needs and wants that you believe you will have. Your budget will also be represented in several different data graphs.

Process

Step 1: Use the Career Cruising website to choose a career. Before you leave the site you should have done the following:

  1. Use the Career Matchmaker to find possible careers based on your personality preferences.
  2. Look at all the possible careers and investigate schooling and income related to at least 3 careers that were chosen for you by the career matchmaker. Fill out information for the chosen careers on your career research sheet.
  3. Choose the career that you would like to base your budget on.

Step 2: Use the saygoodcredit.com site to set up a Family Spending Plan. Use the planning sheets to show flexible spending expenses and fixed spending expenses.

Step 3: Set spending goals for the long term and short term. REMEMBER: YOU SHOULD BE SAVING 2-10% OF YOUR INCOME.

Step 4: Put your spending plan into the online budget tool.

Step 5: Create a graph with Microsoft Excel or Google Docs to represent your budget. Use the graph to create a visual representation that shows the percentage of your total income that each category takes each month.

Step 6: Create a PowerPoint presentation to highlight your chosen career and your budget spending plan. The PowerPoint should include your information from your career research sheet for your chosen career along with pictures from your chosen career. Also include a synopsis of your family spending plan and the graph you created.

Step 7: Reflect on the experience. Write a reflection that shows your point of view on how difficult it would be to make choices about a career and how to spend your income. What decisions were the most difficult? What were the decisions that were the easiest? How did you choose between wants and needs when planning your budget? How do you feel about having to save so much? Why do you need to save?

resources

Career Cruising

This site is a tool paid for by the Columbia County School System, so it requires a username and password. Allows you to take an online assessment of skills and preferences then pulls up a list of possible occupations. From there you can explore schooling, income and tasks related to each possible career choice.

Username: riversidems

Password: evans

WHY BUDGET?

A list of expenses that may incur in a given time.

Home Affordability Calculator

See what type of home you can afford to purchase.

Save a Million Dollars Calculator

Learn how to save a million dollars by retirement.

Budget Planning Tool

Allows you to enter amounts into an online worksheet.

Downloadable Budget Planning

Print out the pages to compile a list of expenses.

Evaluation

Multimedia Project : Career and Budget PowerPoint Presentation
Teacher Name: Ms. Beavers
Student Name: ______
CATEGORY / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1
Presentation / Well-rehearsed with smooth delivery that holds audience attention. / Rehearsed with fairly smooth delivery that holds audience attention most of the time. / Delivery not smooth, but able to maintain interest of the audience most of the time. / Delivery not smooth and audience attention often lost.
Attractiveness / Makes excellent use of font, color, graphics, effects, etc. to enhance the presentation. / Makes good use of font, color, graphics, effects, etc. to enhance to presentation. / Makes use of font, color, graphics, effects, etc. but occasionally these detract from the presentation content. / Use of font, color, graphics, effects etc. but these often distract from the presentation content.
Requirements / All requirements are met and exceeded. / All requirements are met. / One requirement was not completely met. / More than one requirement was not completely met.
Content / Covers topic in-depth with details and examples. Subject knowledge is excellent. / Includes essential knowledge about the topic. Subject knowledge appears to be good. / Includes essential information about the topic but there are 1-2 factual errors. / Content is minimal OR there are several factual errors.

Total Score: _____/14 points

conclusion

Now that you have completed the web quest, you have a good idea of what it takes to choose a career and how you spend yourincome. Both require you to make choices based on what you want and what you may need. Neither are decisions to make lightly, so plan well and you will be able to plan a career along with an appropriate budget and spending plan. Through your data collection and representation you should have been able to see the percentage of your income is related to housing, entertainment and needs for your family. It takes a lot to run a household and I hope that after planning your budget you see the expense related to the different needs of a home and family.

Teacher’s Page

Sixth Graded social Studies STANDARDS:

SS6E4 The student will explain personal money management choices in terms of income, spending, credit, saving, and investing.
M6N1. Students will understand the meaning of the four arithmetic operations as related to positive rational numbers and will use these concepts to solve problems. g. Solve problems involving fractions, decimals, and percents.
M6D1. Students will pose questions, collect data, represent and analyze the data, and interpret results. a. Formulate questions that can be answered by data. Students should collect data by using samples from a larger population (surveys), or by conducting experiments.
Essential Question:

"How can I make money AND spend it?"