Key Vocabulary for Your Field Trip
Use this list to introduce important terms and concepts about money and economics to your students before visiting the Learning Center and Money Museum.
- Bank
- An institution where you can save money and earn interest, or borrow money and pay interest
- Barter
- To trade goods and services without exchanging money
- Benefit
- The satisfaction of your wants; the value attached to the satisfaction of your wants
- Budget
- A plan that includes a detailed list of expenses and income
- Choice
- an option that you have selected
- Consumers
- People whose wants and needs are satisfied by using goods and services
- Demand
- To need or want
- Goods
- Objects that can satisfy your wants or needs
- Hyperinflation
- Quick and uncontrollable inflation
- Income
- Money earned in exchange for your time and labor
- Inflation
- An increase in the average level of prices you must pay to receive goods and services; reduces the purchasing power of money
- Interest
- Money paid to you for borrowing your money, or money you pay for the use of someone else's money; interest can be earned from a bank or credit union
- Investment
- Money put into a company or business with hopes of making more money
- Loss
- A negative return on an investment (i.e., you end up with less than your original investment
- Market
- A place where trade occurs
- Money
- A medium of exchange that is used to buy goods and services
- Opportunity cost
- What you give up when you make a choice
- Price
- The value of goods or services you are expected to give up in exchange for other goods or services
- Producers
- People who produce or have a good or service that they sell to others
- Productive resources
- The natural resources, human resources, and capital goods available to make other goods and services
- Purchase
- To buy; to exchange for money or its equivalent
- Save
- To put aside for later use; to accumulate money; the opposite of spend
- Scarcity
- The problem of having unlimited wants while resources will always be limited
- Services
- Actions that satisfy your wants or needs
- Spend
- To use up; the opposite of save
- Supply
- To sell or provide
- Trade
- To give up something of value that belongs to you in order to receive something of value that belongs to someone else.