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 deposit money and earn interest, and where you can 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
- Choice
- Option that you have selected or chosen
- Consumers
- People whose wants and needs are satisfied by using goods and services
- Cost
- What you give up when you make a decision
- Demand
- To need or want
- Gain
- A positive return on an investment (i.e., you earn more than you invested)
- Goods
- Objects that can satisfy your wants or needs
- Hyperinflation
- Quick and uncontrollable inflation
- Income
- Money you receive in return for your effort or work
- 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 the use of your money; can be earned from a bank; money you pay for the use of someone else’s money
- 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
- 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
- Return
- Profit (or loss) that you earn (or lose) from an investment
- Save
- To put aside for later use; to accumulate money; the opposite of spend
- Services
- Actions that satisfy your wants or needs
- Spend
- To use up; the opposite of save
- Stock
- A type of investment that involves a form of ownership in a company
- 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.
