Identifying financial values

Understanding what’s behind your financial decision-making process is the first step towards managing your financial behaviour. 

Why is this so important?

When you understand yourself better, you can adjust your financial decision-making weaknesses & make the most of your financial decision-making strengths. 

In this WebQuest, you will undertake a series of activities that will help you better understand your financial values and how these values influence your decision-making when it comes to money. After this WebQuest, you will have recorded your answers to these key questions:

• What are my financial values?
• What's my money motivation?
• What important things can money do for me?
  
   

Before you start...

• Identifying your money personality helps you to understand your relationship with money, including what motivates you to earn, save, spend and invest money.
• To identify your money personality, take the quiz now: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/finance/money-personalities-which-one-describes-you/  

Task 1 - Money personality

• Read the summary of your dominant money personality.
• Record your money personality, as well as the breakdown that shows how you scored in each of the personality areas. 
• Read the short summary provided for your money personality and record any suggestions that are made to help you deal with the common money management problems that people with your personality often have. 
• Note two things you learned about yourself from completing your money personality.

Task 2 - Financial values

Download and complete Task 2 worksheet – Financial values. Save a copy of your completed worksheet.

(Source: https://financialbasics.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2_IDENTIFYING_FINANCIAL_VALUES_TASK_2_Financial_Values.xlsx)

Task 3 - What can money do for me?

Use the information you have gained about yourself via your money profile and financial values, and finish this sentence: "The three most important things that I want to make money do for me are..." 

Some examples may include helping loved ones, having the time and flexibility to travel, being able to help people in need, etc.

Make sure you explain your choices. What makes each of these three things so important to you?

Task 4 - Present your findings

Create a presentation summarising what you have found out about yourself and your financial values to submit to your teacher. Your presentation may be in any format (e.g. PowerPoint, Prezi, hand-drawn, etc.) and should include elements such as cartoons, mind maps, images, etc.

The presentation should include:

• Your dominant money personality.
• Your breakdown of how you scored in each of the money personality areas. 
• A list of the common money management problems that people with your personality often have and strategies to manage or deal with these.
• Anything new or interesting that you learned about yourself from completing the money profile quiz. 
• Your Financialvalues.xlsx RANKED SCORES table & chart.
• How your values and priorities match your recent spending and saving actions.
• Any financial values scores or rankings you found interesting or surprising.
• Explanation of the 3 most important things you want money to do you for you.
• Any strategies or actions that you might implement to improve your own money management.                              

SUBMISSION

Submit your responses to Tasks 1, 2, 3 & 4 to your teacher.

Your teacher will review your work and provide feedback.   

Like it or not, how you think about money affects many decisions that you make, often without realising it.

After completing this WebQuest, you should have a better understanding of your motivations and values when it comes to money. How can you use that understanding to improve your future financial decision-making?

• Identify your dominant money personality and be aware of your strengths and weaknesses.
• Identify your financial values and know the things that are important to you. Use this information to help you set priorities for your financial decisions and planning.
• Continue to review your dominant money personality and values and use this information to inform your financial decision making.

Want to learn more about financial decision making? Ask your teacher to download the financial goal-setting resources from www.financialbasics.org.au & sign you up for the ESSI Money Game.

This work is adapted by the content owners from the Financial Basics Foundation OFL (Operation Financial Literacy) resource Module 1: Goal setting - having a financial plan.  Check out the original resource for more teaching and learning activities in this content area.                                               

Financial Basics Foundation resources are free for all Australian educators. You can access these resources here.

Other

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URL: https://www.financialbasics.org.au  

Why should your students do this WebQuest? Their financial values and dominant money personality affect your students’ financial decisions. Understanding what is driving their financial behaviours can give students more control over their financial decision making.

WebQuest Goal: This investigation into their dominant money personality and financial values aims to equip students with a better understanding of what drives their financial behaviours.  

Time required to complete this WebQuest: Approximately 70 minutes. 

Advice from FBF:

• Students complete the Task 2 worksheet – Financial values spreadsheet electronically by selecting responses from drop-down boxes and typing their responses in the appropriate text entry fields. Spreadsheet software is required to complete this task.
• Tasks in this WebQuest have been designed for students to complete individually.
• Register your students for Financial Basics Foundation’s ESSI Money Game to help them experience financial decision-making in a real-life gamified personal finance educational simulation.

Standards

The content and tasks in this WebQuest have been mapped to the following Australian Curriculum elements:

• Consumer and financial literacy - use critical thinking and problem-solving skills to make informed consumer and financial decisions.
• Competence - the application of consumer and financial knowledge and skills in a range of changing contexts. 
• General Capabilities – critical and creating thinking: Imagine, generate, develop and critically evaluate ideas (Technologies), generate and evaluate knowledge, ideas and possibilities, and use them when seeking solutions (Mathematics).
• English - use a range of software, including word processing programs, flexibly and imaginatively to publish texts (ACELY1748).
• Economics and Business - interpret data and information displayed in different formats to identify relationships and trends (ACHES034).