B1 – Money Management

Description

A B1-level ESL lesson on money management, perfect for learners who enjoy real-world topics and practical vocabulary.

Students discuss spending habits, watch an authentic video on saving tips, and identify key ways to cut down on expenses. The lesson includes vocabulary for everyday finances, listening for detail, and a case study – Marta’s Budget Challenge – where students give budgeting advice and debate spending vs saving. Ideal for building fluency through engaging, relatable content.

Warmer: Spending Habits Discussion

The lesson starts with a casual conversation about what students like to spend their money on and the stuff they want to buy but can’t quite afford right now. This discussion not only warms them up to the topic but also gets into some useful vocab, like to spend money on + noun/gerund and can’t afford + noun / to infinitive. When you teach this to adults, you might notice they hit a wall with the second question.

Listening for Gist: Overspending and Saving Tips

The input of the class is a video from Bank of America about spending habits and saving tips. Before diving into it, students think of three areas where people usually overspend. If they’re having a tough time coming up with ideas, you can show an example, like how people often splurge on the latest clothes. Students pair up and brainstorm three common areas where people tend to spend too much. After eliciting some answers, you watch the video How to Save Money on Everyday Expenses and see if their answers were mentioned.

Watch the video again, and this time zero in on some specific questions about each topic they bring up (like supermarkets, household expenses, transportation, and activities). Chat about the answers, and if you feel like it, pause after each section and dive into the ideas covered in the video.

Post-Listening Discussion: Saving Tips

Wrap up this part of the class with a post-listening discussion. Give students two opinion-based questions and ask them to share which ideas from the video they found most helpful. Then, brainstorm some other ways they could save money in the areas the video talked about. For example, they could think about buying stuff online to steer clear of those tempting impulse buys, and so on.

Case Study: Budget Challenge

This lesson was designed for a Business English group made up of finance pros. To wrap things up, we decided to have a fun discussion about a made-up character. Since money can be a touchy subject in Spain – especially when it comes to salaries – it felt safer to stick with a fictional person. The students read about Marta, a graphic designer who’s trying to save up for her upcoming vacation. In pairs, they look over her salary and expenses and then brainstorm the best advice for her. Discuss how much she should ideally spend each month on things like food, entertainment, and transportation.