Paying Yourself First
Once young people start earning money, they may have difficulty determining how to allocate it. This unit will provide your students with the tools for saving money, setting saving goals, and growing savings through interest.
Individual and Family Savings Goals
This guide will help parents discuss their families’ savings goals and assist their teens in setting ones for themselves. Families will also find tips and links on saving strategies.
Deciding to Save Money
Students will create timelines that represent their futures and consider how they will earn and spend money 5, 25, and 50 years from now. Using an online savings calculator, students will explore the impact of saving early and the importance of compound interest.
Deciding to Save Money
In this module, students learn - through the experiences of others -why it is both helpful and advantageous to start saving at least some of the money they receive or earn and to continue saving throughout their lives. In addition to exploring the concept of opportunity costs, students will also learn strategies to help reframe their decisions about spending and saving as they explore ways to grow their savings, over time, through interest.
Spend Now or Spend Later?
Students will create timelines that represent their futures and consider how they will earn and spend money 5, 25, and 50 years from now. Using an online savings calculator, students will explore the impact of saving early and the importance of compound interest.
Supplemental Resource Links
Choosing to Save
This lesson focuses on the reasons people decide to save money and encourages students to develop a savings plan. (To access these resources, you will need to register for a free account and verify that you are an educator. Once logged in, the link above will take you directly to the resource.)
Why Are We So Impatient? A Look into Money and Delayed Gratification
This two-page article on why people struggle to save for the future includes eight questions that can be used to determine student understanding.
Time Preference—Why It Is Hard to Save
In this lesson, students investigate the decision to save as a choice between spending now or spending later and how people’s natural preference to enjoy goods and services now affects this decision.
3 Psychological Tricks to Help You Save Money
Share this video with students to explore ways people can trick themselves into saving more money more often.
Setting Savings Goals
Your students will consider their family's savings goals and their own savings goals. They will explore ways to express their goals clearly and technology to help them reach their savings goals.
Setting Savings Goals
In this module, students learn - through the experiences of others -why it is both helpful and advantageous to start saving at least some of the money they receive or earn and to continue saving throughout their lives. In addition to exploring the concept of opportunity costs, students will also learn strategies to help reframe their decisions about spending and saving as they explore ways to grow their savings, over time, through interest.
Supplemental Resource Links
Setting a SMART Savings Goal
Apply the elements of a SMART goal to the topic of savings with this student worksheet.
My New Money Goal
With this four-page interactive worksheet, students can document a savings goal and take steps to reach it.
A Simple 2-Step Plan for Saving More Money
In this video, behavioral scientist Wendy De La Rosa explains the rationale for her two savings recommendations: having just one savings goal at a time and making savings automatic.
Save Money for My Goals
Encourage students to fill in this interactive worksheet with potential savings goals, the amount of money they will need, and how long they have until the money will be needed.
Why You NEED an Emergency Fund!
Why do you need an emergency fund and what happens if you don’t have one? This video shares examples of reasons people should make having an emergency fund one of their savings goals and strategies students can take to start one.
My Emergency Savings Fund Plan
Invite students to use the interactive or PDF version of this activity to create a personal plan for establishing an emergency savings fund.
Finding Money to Save
Your students will explore specific strategies to save money and work in groups to research technology services that claim to help people save money more easily.
Find Money to Save
This module will introduce your students to the principles and purpose of saving money and provide them strategies for saving money.
Saving Made Easy
After sharing how likely they would be to save money they receive, students work in groups to research technology services, including apps, that claim to help people save money more easily. Groups present their findings to the class and make comparisons between the services described.
Supplemental Resource Links
54 Ways to Save Money
Your students can view this list of 54 ways to reduce costs and find money to save, organized by categories such as food, entertainment, and transportation.
How to Save Money
This guide helps students learn how to save money on daily, monthly, and yearly expenses.
Find Money to Save
Check out this list of twenty strategies for saving money and see which ones resonate with students.
Unique Money Traditions from Around the World
Money habits, values, and experiences can be influenced by culture and tradition. This video explores money customs from across the globe, including ways people save, lend, and share money.
Growing Savings Through Interest
Examine the power of compound interest including comparisons of savers that start early with small contributions and later with larger ones.
Growing Savings Through Compound Interest
This module will help your students answer why it is important to save money early. Students will explore the power of compound interest by seeing how people who save small amounts early on increase their money.
Supplemental Resource Links
Compound Interest
This four-minute video provides an overview of what compound interest is and how it works. Graphs show the difference between simple and compound interest and the impact of starting to save early.
Boost Your Savings: The Importance of Saving
Students learn how compound interest works and how interest is calculated on savings.
Rule of 72
Show your students this quick formula to calculate how long it will take to double their money. This video explains the rule of 72 including the impact inflation has on savings.
Compound Interest Calculator
Your students can determine how much their money can grow using the power of compound interest. They can also calculate how much money they will need to save each month in order to reach their goal.
Saving
This unit includes multiple lessons, activities, and projects focused on saving and compound interest. (To access these resources, you will need to register for a free account and verify that you are an educator.)
Choosing a Savings Method
Compare common savings methods including savings accounts, certificates of deposit, and money market accounts and the benefits and tradeoffs of each.
Choosing a Savings Method
During this module, your students will compare various savings methods, including certificates of deposit, savings accounts, and money market accounts, and consider the benefits and tradeoffs of each.
Supplemental Resource Links
What is a Certificate of Deposit?
Your students will learn how Certificates of Deposit (CDs) provide a safe way to save and often earn greater interest rates than regular savings account. This video explains how they work along with the benefits and tradeoffs.
Types of Savings Accounts
Your students can read this overview of different types of savings accounts and what to look for when selecting one.
Types of Savings Accounts Lesson for Grades 6-12
In this lesson, students learn the characteristics of three types of savings accounts: traditional, money market, and certificates of deposit.
Storing My Savings
Invite students to complete this worksheet and compare nine places to keep their savings, including several different types of accounts.
Wait, Is Saving Good or Bad? The Paradox of Thrift
Students read an article on the benefits and tradeoffs of savings for the overall economy and answer questions in this lesson correlated to the Common Core standards for literacy in history and social studies.
Why Should You Save And Invest?
This infographic depicts the differences between saving and investing and shares information about common tools used for both.