A lost cell phone, a car accident, a medical emergency. Unexpected events like these can wreak havoc on a budget if you’re not prepared. Set your high school students up for success with this lesson on how to plan for and deal with unexpected expenses.

What’s this unexpected financial events lesson all about?

You’ll begin this lesson by brainstorming unexpected expenses and reviewing vocabulary like budget, expense, and income, as well as the difference between gross and net pay. Students will consider a fictional job at a juice bar and calculate their take-home pay. From there, they’ll create a budget with recurring expenses with a goal of maintaining 20% for financial emergencies. The exit ticket assesses their learning on the topic.

Vocab review slide from unexpected events lesson on a tablet

How does an interactive whiteboard lesson work?

  1. Download the PowerPoint or make a copy of the Google Slides.
  2. Project the lesson onto your screen or interactive whiteboard.
  3. This lesson is 100% ready to go! Just follow the Presenter Notes at the bottom of each slide. Here you’ll find what to do, what to say, what questions to ask, and what directions to give as the lesson progresses.
  4. If you’re working on an interactive whiteboard, you can type or write right in the paycheck boxes. (Note: For this to work, you must be in Editor and not Presenter mode.)
  5. For student independent practice and the exit ticket, students can do their work in a math journal or make their own copy in Google Slides and type directly in it.

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