Setting Personal and Financial Goals

 

A lesson designed to get students thinking about personal and financial goals

I like to start the first week of school with a lesson I designed to get students thinking about their personal and financial goals – “Wonderful Life”.  

This fun, interactive project gives students a chance to get to know each other while creating a presentation that reveals their goals regarding career, wages, and lifestyle.  It also sharpens their communication and presentation skills. As a culminating activity, each student presents their project to the class. It is a great first lesson.

Over 600 teachers have download this FREE lesson from Teachers Pay Teachers since January 1, 2013.  If you have not already grabbed it, here is the link... “Wonderful Life”.

Teaching “Wonderful Life”

Now that so many teachers are using this lesson, I thought I would offer a few tips on how I teach “Wonderful Life.”

I like starting the class off with this assignment because it eases the students (and the teacher) into the class, and it is a fun way for everyone to get to know each other.  It gives the teacher a chance to spend some one-on-one time with students.  It also sets the stage for the rest of the course.

Teacher tips

When I begin this lesson I always show students a completed presentation.  My thinking is that students will create something as good or better than the sample I show them.

I review the features of the presentation software students will be using - if needed. 

I stress that students should give plenty of details on each of the topics included the presentation.

Topic: Describe your dream home

Example: My dream home is a log cabin located on a beautiful, blue lake high in the mountains.  Secretly it would be very a high-tech house---but have a rustic look.     

I also spend some time talking about page layout – organizing and designing easy to read headings, subheadings, and text, as well as graphics that drive your point home.  I talk about trapped white space and how to avoid it. I usually steer students away from using clip art - pictures just seem more sophisticated.

I tell students that they will be presenting their project and that it would be to their advantage not to use animations like flash or crawl.  These types of animations are really distracting.  “Crawl” loses the class because it takes too long and “flash” just confuses everyone including the teacher who is attempting to grade the presentation.

Timing

It takes about a week for students to complete this assignment and an additional three days for student presentations. This is my experience with a class of about 32 students.

Every class is different, as is every student. Some will take a little more time to complete the lesson and others will take less time. I ask students who finish early to spend time editing their presentation and adding sound and animation. This gives the rest of the class time to finish up.

 

Next Week...more on presentation setup for “Wonderful Life”.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Net Worth Update (August 2013)

Current Net Worth
Assets	Jul-13	Aug-13	Change	% change
Savings Account 1	$2,759.47	$2,706.00	($53.47)	-1.94
Savings Account 2	$3,223.53	$5,116.49	$1,892.96	58.72
Savings Account 3	$25,093.43	$26,325.95	$1,232.52	4.91
Investment Linked Fund	$8,922.62	$8,128.83	($793.79)	-8.90
Schroders Commodity Fund	$9,334.73	$9,722.21	$387.48	4.15
Stock Holdings	$9,680.00	$8,760.00	($920.00)	-9.50
Phillip Money Market Fund	$15,037.05	$15,042.25	$5.20	0.03
Physical cash	$1,000.00	$1,000.00	$0.00	0.00
Market Value Of BTO Flat (to be built in 2016/2017)	$750,000.00	$750,000.00	$0.00
Total Assets	$825,050.83	$826,801.73	$1,750.90	0.21
Liabilities
Home Loan	$617,500	$617,500	$0.00	0.00
Net Worth (including flat to be built in 2016/2017)	$207,550.83	$209,301.73	$1,750.90	0.84
Investible Net Worth	$75,050.83	$76,801.73	$1,750.90	2.33

• Cash/Cash equivalents increased by $3,077 in August. Total accumulated cash/cash equivalents is now $50,000. However, the drop in the value of my investment assets offset the increase in cash, resulting in a 2.3% increase in overall investible net worth.
• Value of stock holdings and mutual funds decreased about 9-10% due to lacklustre economic data and the fear of a reduction in quantitative easing in the US.
• First big hurdle for the markets in September will be the August employment report, which could dictate Fed's decision on the reduction of quantitative easing, which is speculated to happen in September.
• Commodity fund rose 4% in August due to the conflict in Syria, coupled with the attack on a key pipeline in Iraq that reduced the country's oil exports by 290,000 a day. In addition, protests in Libya and disruptions on key pipelines in Nigeria contributed to the reduced global oil output.