In this unit, the students examine closely what it means to spend, save, invest, and donate.  Students will gain an understanding of the importance of budgeting, create a personal spending plan, and investigate the uses and misuses of credit, including installment loans and credit cards.  Throughout the unit, students are reinforced in “the economic way of thinking” with emphasis on improving their understanding of scarcity, the role of opportunity costs in decision making and the responsible use of credit.  Students will use an economic decision making model to choose a service learning project to promote financial literacy and responsible use of credit amongst peers and/or in the community.  Students will be guided through proposing, planning, problem solving, implementing, and reflecting on service projects that meet a real community need.  Finally, students will create and present a demonstration of their service project.

The learner will:

• describe choices one can make with money.
• define philanthropy (philanthropist) as giving time, talent, or treasure, and taking action for the common good.
• describe the economic and financial concepts of: resources, scarcity, choice, benefits, costs, opportunity cost, interest, interest rate, principal, simple interest, compound interest, compounding, spend, save, invest, donate, credit, short-term goal, long-term goal.
• discuss motivations for giving, and options for donating.
• identify steps in the goal-setting process.
• participate in discussions about goals and the use of money.
• give examples of short and long-term goals and opportunity costs for each.
• identify the benefits of setting goals and committing to them.
• describe the two basic types of investments.
• identify personal income and expenditures.
• create a personal spending plan/budget.
• identify uses and misuses of credit.
• define the terms mortgage; credit; credit report/score; net income; simple, installment and revolving credit; credit card; debit card.
• identify the pros and cons/uses and abuses of credit and credit cards, and apply this information to the use of money.
• calculate a “safe” debt load using the 20/10 Rule.
• calculate interest and interest rate on installment loans.
• decipher the language in credit card offers.
• make an informed decision after comparing credit card offers.
• locate relevant information from a credit card statement.
• use an economic decision-making model.
• develop specific criteria for selecting a service project that meets community needs.
• investigate, plan, implement, and problem solve a meaningful service project with peers and/or local communit.
• define how choices can affect their own well-being and that of the community.
• reflect on the things they learned and how they shared with the community through their service project.
• plan and implement a visual demonstration of what they did.

Lesson One - Ask students to write and describe a personal example of scarcity, choice, and opportunity cost from the perspectives of spending, saving, investing, donating, or using credit of any kind and/or Ask students to reflect in writing on why people give, or why they personally think it is important to give or donate.
Lesson Two - The learners will be assessed based on their contributions to the class discussions, learners understanding and demonstration of math calculations, and the completion and appropriate reporting of their in-class as well as homework assignments.
Lesson Three - Students should be assessed through observation of participation in the economic decision-making process and in the planning and implementation of the service project.
Lesson Four - The quality of the demonstration, including the depth of content contributed by groups, evidence of application of new knowledge, and observation of group cooperation will serve as assessment for this lesson.  A teacher created vocabulary quiz and/or a teacher created content test may be used to assess mastery of objectives about money choices and wise use of credit.

The contents of Lesson One correlate with Money Smart Choices: Financial Literacy and Philanthropy, www.learningtogive.org/moneysmartchoices/, an interactive web site created through a partnership between the National Endowment for Financial Education and The LEAGUE/Learning to Give.  The unit can be used effectively even if Internet access is not available to students
In Lesson Four the students plan and create a demonstration of their learning and service project.  It is highly recommended that advance plans be made to digitally photograph or video all the student planning and implementing of the service project for use in creating the class demonstration of learning and service.