Care leaver suitable: Budgeting and planning for the future

This activity pack introduces young people to the basics of personal finance and budgeting, before asking them to create their own budget and consider how this might help them plan for their future. They’ll also look at different scenarios where they may have to deal with unanticipated spending, and come up with practical budgeting tips that they can use to respond to these.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this lesson, participants will be able to:

• Explain what it means to budget and how it can support them to live independently
• Identify the different information they’ll need to build a personal budget
• Demonstrate practical ways to manage their personal finances by building their own budget
• Understand the importance of not just managing money day-to-day, but preparing for unforeseen expenses or emergencies
• Speculate about scenarios that may potentially have a negative impact on their finances, as well as budgeting tips they may use to deal with these situations

To access worksheets for all twelve activity packs in one place, use our ‘Setting yourself up for financial independence’ workbook.

Other LifeSkills lessons are also suitable for use with care leavers to support them on their employability journey, here are some to get started with:

• Aiming high (proactivity)
• Growth mindset toolkit

If you want to increase your own confidence to teach young people about money, Young Money provide free e-learning training to teachers across Primary and Secondary education.  In addition, National Numeracy has a free website which helps you practise and refresh your everyday maths skills.

As a signatory to the Care Leaver Covenant, LifeSkills created with Barclays have worked directly with young people who have experienced care as well as the adults supporting them to create twelve activities adapted from existing financial education content. Activities include case studies, quizzes, discussions and practical tasks to build skills, knowledge and confidence, and can be delivered one-to-one or in a small group. Each pack includes guidance for support workers, worksheets for young people and useful signposting. Young people can register on LifeSkills to access further interactive resources on managing their money and building skills for the world of work here barclayslifeskills.com/young-people.