Goals, Objectives, Outline, and Testing for Spending, Budgeting & Saving

Primary Learning Goal: Develop long term and short term plans for spending, budgeting, and saving.

Primary Learning Sub-Goal:Demonstrate responsible use of cash in the development of long- and short-term plans for spending, budgeting, and saving.

Related Learning Objective:

Understand and Discuss the General and/or Responsible Useof Cash/Money.

Related Enabling Objectives:

  • Explain how discussing important financial (money) matters with household members can help reduce conflict.
  • Give examples of how decisions made today can affect future opportunities.
  • Given a personal finance scenario for a family of four, describe how to apply systematic decision making to choose among alternative consumer actions.

Area Topic Outline

  1. Discuss family financial matters
  2. To promote understanding
  3. To reduce conflict
  4. As a family unit
  5. As a family member
  6. Relation of current decisions to future abilities
  7. How decisions affect each other
  8. For the family member
  9. Immediate effects
  10. Long-term effects
  11. For the Family Group
  12. Immediate effects
  13. Long-term effects
  14. Applying systematic decision making
  15. As a family group
  16. To reach goals
  17. To avoid financial problems
  18. As individual members
  19. To support family objectives
  20. To build personal understanding and outcomes

Evaluation of Goodness of Information area

  • Test for understanding of how family interchange of financial status, and how finances affect the family as a whole and individuals within the family.
  • Test for family member’s ability to relate financial decisions to results and how those results impact all members of the family unit.
  • Test for the individuals’ understanding of the relation between financial decisions made by each family member and the effect on the ability of the family to survive.

Related Learning Objective:

Understand and Discuss Budgeting Concepts and Methods.

Related Enabling Objectives:

  • Develop a definition of wealth based on personal values, priorities, and goals.
  • Apply systematic decision making to the determination of short-, medium-, and long-term financial goals.
  • Set measurable short-, medium-, and long-term financial goals.
  • Prioritize personal financial goals.
  • Discuss the components of a personal budget, including income, planned saving, taxes, and fixed and variable expenses.
  • Explain how to use a budget to manage spending and achieve financial goals.
  • Analyze how changes in circumstances can affect a personal budget.
  • Given a scenario, apply systematic decision making to identify the most cost-effective option for making large purchases (i.e., car, college).
  • Given a scenario, design a personal budget for a young person living alone.

Area Topic Outline

  1. The meaning of wealth
  2. Defined
  3. As it applies to the family unit
  4. Short-term goals and priorities
  5. Long-term goals and priorities
  6. As it applies to family members
  7. In the present
  8. In the future
  9. Affects on other members
  10. Affects on individual
  11. Application of the decision-making process
  12. As a non-systematic application
  13. Affect on short-term goals
  14. Family Unit
  15. Individual members
  16. Affect on medium-term goals
  17. Family Unit
  18. Individual members
  19. Affect on long-term goals
  20. Family Unit
  21. Individual members
  22. As a systematic application
  23. Affect on short-term goals
  24. Family Unit
  25. Individual members
  26. Affect on medium-term goals
  27. Family Unit
  28. Individual members
  29. Affect on long-term goals
  30. Family Unit
  31. Individual members
  32. Setting measurable short-, medium-, and long-term financial goals
  33. Family unit
  34. Choosing how to measure
  35. Determining how to judge success or failure
  36. Determination of next steps
  37. Individual
  38. Choosing how to measure
  39. Determining how to judge success or failure
  40. Determination of next steps
  41. Setting priorities for personal financial goals
  42. Methods
  43. Affects on the individual
  44. Affect on the family unit
  45. The components of a personal budget, applied as indicated to each family member and to the family
  46. Income
  47. Current
  48. Forecast future earning ability
  49. Fallbacks in case of loss or diminished earning
  50. planned saving
  51. Regular saving habits
  52. Saving toward goal(s)
  53. Saving as safety net
  54. Taxes
  55. Understanding
  56. Making provision for meeting requirements
  57. Fixed and variable expenses.
  58. For the Family Unit
  59. For each family member
  60. The budget as a tool for managing spending and achieving financial goals
  61. Budgeting at the family level
  62. Setting priorities
  63. Creating safety net
  64. Setting goals
  65. Monitoring progress
  66. When Adjustment is needed
  67. Budgeting at the family member level
  68. Setting personal priorities
  69. Learning how to choose
  70. Learning how to adjust to changing need
  71. Maintaining budget awareness
  72. Making priority decisions
  73. Changes in circumstances and the personal budget
  74. When income changes
  75. When needs change
  76. When priorities change
  77. When the family is threatened
  78. When large financial decisions are required

Examples: New Home, New Car, School, Medical (accident, illness, support)

  1. How choices are made
  2. Based on need
  3. Based on options
  4. Effect on other areas
  5. Effect on the family unit
  6. Effect on the individual family members

Evaluation of Goodness of Information area

  • Test for methods/steps for goal-setting toward a viable budget.
  • Test for the application of systematic decision making to identify the most cost-effective option for making large purchases (i.e., car, college, car, home, etc.).
  • Test for the method used to design all aspects of a personal budget for a young person:
  • Living in a family unit
  • Living in a family unit, but helping with expenses
  • Living outside a family unit.

Related Learning Objective:

Understand and develop methods for determining how to spend wisely

Related Enabling Objectives:

  • Explain the relationship between spending practices and achieving financial goals.
  • Prepare a personal spending diary.
  • Identify changes in personal spending behavior that contribute to wealth-building.
  • Identify differences among peers' values and attitudes about money.
  • Analyze how economic, social-cultural, and political conditions can affect personal spending.
  • Calculate future income needed to maintain a current standard of living.
  • Describe possible consequences of excessive debt.
  • Given an age-appropriate scenario, describe how to use systematic decision making to choose among courses of action that include a range of spending and non-spending alternatives.

Area Topic Outline

  1. What ‘Spend’ means
  2. Defined
  3. As it applies to the family unit
  4. Spending with need to budget for goals in mind
  5. Spending within the budget
  6. Modification of the spending based on changing circumstances
  7. As it applies to family members
  8. Setting up a spending plan
  9. Building parameters
  10. Setting limits
  11. Flexibility when needed
  12. Applying to changing situation
  13. Aligning with income
  14. Emergency plans
  15. When they are real
  16. Avoiding over- or under-reactions
  17. Understanding how to spend
  18. Creating a personal spending diary
  19. Changing spending habits
  20. Preparing for the future
  21. Learning from the past
  22. Habits of spending toward long-term financial status
  23. The personal perspective
  24. Setting goals
  25. Short-term
  26. Long-range
  27. Building a plan
  28. Include needs – and ‘wants’
  29. Learn to differentiate
  30. Maintaining
  31. How and when to make course changes
  32. How financial status is affected by other factors
  33. Education
  34. Consistent application of learned values
  35. Periodic reevaluation of needs and abilities
  36. Adjustments of plan as required
  37. Influence by peers values and attitudes
  38. Recognition of positive factors
  39. Rejection of negative factors
  40. The effect of economic, social-cultural, and political conditions
  41. How the global financial state affects you
  42. Countries’ problems and how they spread
  43. The ‘trickle-down’ effects of spending and financial loss
  44. How the ‘hive-effect’ has influence on your thinking
  45. Panic attacks
  46. ‘Knee-jerk’ reactions
  47. Where government impacts family
  48. The effect of taxes
  49. The effect of services
  50. The effect on health
  51. The effect on education
  52. The effect on retirement
  53. Planning for a stable future
  54. Building a plan for income during emergencies
  55. Building a plan for income in case of illness
  56. Building a plan for income during retirement
  57. The meaning of debt
  58. The difference between ‘normal’ and excessive debt
  59. As a family
  60. As an individual
  61. Effects of debt
  62. At the family level
  63. For the individual family member
  64. Setting up a plan
  65. How to avoid
  66. How to cope
  67. How to repair
  68. Maintaining surveillance

Evaluation of Goodness of Information area

  • Test, using an age-appropriate scenario, methods for using systematic decision making to choose among courses of action that include a range of spending and non-spending alternatives.

Related Learning Objective:

Understand and develop methods for incorporating wise saving habits into the financial plan

Related Enabling Objectives:

  • Give examples of how saving money can improve financial well-being.
  • Identify current areas of spending that can be transformed into sources of money saving (ex:frugality, comparison shopping, negotiating rates).
  • Explain the value of an emergency fund.
  • Describe the advantages and disadvantages of saving for short-, medium-, and long-term goals.
  • Identify and compare saving strategies, includingpaying yourself first, using payroll deduction, and comparison shopping to spend less.
  • Compare and contrast benefits and risks for various 529 College Savings Plans
  • Explain the advantages of high yield savings accounts.
  • Apply comparison shopping skills to compare and contrast high yield savings account offerings and other short-term savings accounts (money markets, CDs, savings bonds).

Area Topic Outline

  1. The concept of saving
  2. As it applies to the individual
  3. Informally
  4. In a savings account
  5. Saving and the family
  6. Relation to goals
  7. Relation to debt
  8. Affects on family health and future
  9. Relation of saving to spending and to debt
  10. How each affects the other
  11. Ways in which saving becomes the buffer
  12. How to save
  13. The ‘mattress’ syndrome
  14. Saving vs. investing
  15. Saving vs. insurance
  16. Learning the basics of saving by spending wisely
  17. Comparison shopping
  18. How to spend
  19. Bargaining
  20. Understanding ‘need’ vs. ‘want’
  21. The vehicles for saving
  22. Payroll deduction
  23. Interest-paying saving plans
  24. Long-term saving vehicles
  25. Bonds
  26. Certificates of Deposit
  27. Specialized ‘College’ saving plans
  28. Long-term Health Care plans
  29. Saving as part of the total financial goal
  30. Savings and its relation to the budget
  31. Savings and its relationship to spending

Evaluation of Goodness of Information area

  • Test for the development of a method for saving for short-, and long-term needs and defensible wants.
  • Test for the methods for setting up a comparison of the types of saving vehicles and the proper application of each.
  • Test for successful comparison and contrast of the difference between saving accounts, investing, and bonds/CDs

Group Three (Imagine!)Page 1