Money Confident Kids®

Goal setting

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What you’ll achieve in this lesson  

Financial goal setting helps kids envision why and what they’re saving for and when they want to achieve it, based on their time horizon.

Learning objectives you’ll cover

Discover what matters

Kids are guided to think about what’s important to them and create SMART goals to define what they want to achieve. 

Set and stick to a budget

Basics for creating and following a budget are introduced to show how to achieve goals while learning how “income - expenses = savings.”

How to track goals over time

Kids learn the importance of tracking goals to a specific date, or a “time horizon.” The idea that some goals have an immediate time horizon—clothes or the latest tech—while others, like higher education, happen over months and years is reinforced. 

Staying focused

At the heart of all lessons is helping kids think long term about their money. To stay on track to achieve their goals, they have to stay focused and make trade-off spending decisions along the way.  

Explore this lesson

View lesson pages and activities here, or download the full Student Workbook. Remember to check the Teaching Guide to know the vocabulary and takeaways for this lesson as well as questions to ask when reviewing concepts with kids. 

All materials are free, and downloadable portable document formats (PDFs) so you easily use what works for you.

Goal setting is broken into two lessons:

Better set a budget

Now in middle school, Nikki learns about SMART goals and analyzes her goal of building a robot for the school science fair. This part of the lesson helps kids focus on setting and achieving short-term goals in the early saving years.  

Start Lesson 1 Activity Sheet

Get the big picture

Nikki is now a senior in college and going through her decision-making process to invest in herself and continue her education. This second part of the lesson jumps ahead to the future to get kids thinking about goals to aspire to.   

Start Lesson 2 Activity Sheet
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