Core Life Skills
Needs, Wants, And Trade-Offs
This lesson helps students separate needs from wants and think through everyday choices about money and time. They notice where their ideas about what they want come from, practise making trade-offs honestly, and create a simple Decision Rules card for future decisions.
What you will learn
- Identify everyday moments where limited money, time, or attention means making a choice.
- Notice the everyday influences (family, friends, ads, stress) that shape what you call a want or a need.
- Understand needs, wants, and opportunity cost, and use them to set priorities.
- Practise choosing between options when there is not enough time or money for everything.
- Create a short Decision Rules card for future spending or time choices.
What happens in this lesson
Chapter 1: Daily Spending Tensions
Identify everyday moments where limited money, time, or attention means making a choice, and notice where the wants behind those choices come from.
What you make: A saved tension sort record naming two real recent trade-offs the learner made without thinking about them, plus a brief note on one influence that shaped one of those wants.
Chapter 2: Scarcity And Priority
Understand needs, wants, and opportunity cost, and use them to set priorities.
What you make: A saved needs/wants/priority chart for the learner's own spending or time choices this week.
Chapter 3: Trade-Off Game
Practise choosing between options when there is not enough time or money for everything.
What you make: A saved trade-off result sheet showing the learner's choices across three linked decisions and the real cost of each.
Chapter 4: Decision Rules
Create a short Decision Rules card for future spending or time choices.
What you make: A completed Decision Rules card with three simple rules and one specific upcoming decision to use them on.
Chapter 5: Trade-Offs Over A Week
Plan a realistic week using needs, wants, priorities, and opportunity cost.
What you make: A saved one-week decision plan showing how the learner will protect one priority while still meeting needs and leaving room for one want.
Chapter 6: When Decision Rules Break
Improve decision rules when priorities clash or circumstances change.
What you make: A revised Decision Rules card with one rule improved after testing it against a realistic exception.
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