Title: Description: Decisionmaking
Course: Personal Finance Sample "STANDARD" Syllabus - for Canvas Upload > Section: Unit 1: Decisionmaking

Scarcity of resources requires individuals, organizations, and governments to make decisions. Students will explore limited resources, opportunity cost, and trade-offs. They will also learn to use the PACED decisionmaking model.

Talking Points
1. Scarcity necessitates that a decision be made. Scarcity is not having enough resources to produce all of the goods and services that would satisfy the wants of individuals or society in general.
2. Productive resources are scarce because there are not enough of them to produce the unlimited amounts of goods and services that society wants.
3. People face scarcity of marketable resources (land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship). This scarcity limits their ability to earn income.
4 .Because of limited income and limits to their time, people must make choices about allocating/rationing what is available.
5. The PACED model provides a five-step process for making decisions:

P- Identify the problem. Usually, the problem is related to scarcity.

A- List alternatives—the options you will choose from.

C- Select criteria—the things that are important to you in making the decision.

E- Evaluate alternatives based on the criteria.

D- Make a decision.

6. Even though people may face the same problem and alternatives, they may have different criteria and evaluate the alternatives differently based on those criteria. So, faced with the same problem, people do not necessarily make the same decision.
7. The PACED model is not about finding the “correct” choice for everybody; it is about making a careful, well-informed decision for yourself.

Standard and Benchmarks
NOTE: The following standard and benchmarks are unique to this curriculum.
Standard: Decisionmaking
Choice is the central principle of financial decisionmaking for individuals, businesses, and government.  People make many choices every day in markets where buyers and sellers interact. This interaction determines market prices and allocates scarce goods and services based on supply and demand. Every decision incurs an opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the next-best alternative given up when a decision is made.

Grade 12 Benchmarks
1. People make decisions because their wants exceed available resources.
2. A rational decisionmaking process that includes identifying alternatives, stating criteria, and evaluating alternatives according to those criteria is a very useful tool.
3. Decisionmaking includes recognizing the opportunity cost of a decision.
4. Decisions made today have consequences in the future. There are both intended and unintended
consequences of a decision