Interactive Handouts Courtesy of Barbara O'Neill and Kerri Herrild!
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Aug 11, 2017
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Interactive, Budgeting, Featured Teachers, Investing, Lesson Idea, Tips for Teachers, Summer Institute, Teaching Strategies
As part of our Summer Institute session, educators had the opportunity to take an engaging personal finance interactive resource and create a handout to accompany it.
Hat tip to Barbara O'Neill of Rutgers University, New Brunswick (NJ) and Kerri Herrild of De Pere High School, De Pere (WI) who shared their finished products with us.
For those of you looking for high quality, engaging, resources guaranteed to get your students thinking about their financial mindset, look no further than...
Interactive: What Does $1,500 In Monthly Rent Buy You in Different Markets?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jul 11, 2017
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Interactive, Question of the Day, Research, Budgeting, Chart of the Week
Visual Capitalist provides a great interactive tool for your students to see the wide disparity in the cost of living as seen through rental costs:
With rental prices across the country continuing to rise from this demand, there is one question on the minds of many Americans: how and where can dollars spent on housing be stretched the furthest?
Why is this important to know? Largest cost item for young people living on their own will be that monthly rent check so they better have a realistic...
NGPF FAVORITES: Our Best OFF TO COLLEGE Resources
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jul 07, 2017
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Activities, Credit Scores, Activity, Behavioral Finance, Career, Paying for College, Budgeting, Savings, Student Loans, Stocks, Current Events, Interactive
This month’s NGPF Favorites List comes from Sid Sharma – one of NGPF’s veteran “Power Interns” who has been with us for 3 years. Sadly, we will wish him well as he heads off to college this fall! We wanted Sid to reflect on his NGPF experience (he has literally “touched” every element in the NGPF curriculum) and highlight the resources that have enabled him to become the knowledgeable, action-oriented, process-innovator that he is today!...
Do Your Weekly Lunches Cost You $90,000 in Retirement Savings?
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Jun 14, 2017
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Chart of the Week, Behavioral Finance, Budgeting, Personal Finance, Article, Math, Retirement
“US households spent $3,008, or about $8.35 a day, on average, eating out in 2015… Investing $3,008 each year… would add up 30 years later to… more than $250,000. Similarly, investing $3.50 a day for 30 years instead of buying a latte would add up to savings of nearly $107,000”. (USA Today, June 2017)
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We all know that it is hard to save enough for retirement. Financial education teachers also know that students sometimes struggle to relate decisions...
Shopping In The Amazon Era
A fella two rows back from me on my flight today was lamenting the fall of Sears. He hadn’t shopped there in a while and was surprised how far and how fast the retail experience at their stores had declined. As more and more shopping moves from “bricks and mortar” to online, we better start developing a new skill set for shoppers. You will see one example of what can go wrong with online shopping described below.
But before we get to that, here are some stats showing the...
NGPF's Top 15 Activities, Courtesy of Jessica Endlich
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jun 06, 2017
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Activities, Activity, Budgeting, Personal Finance, Savings, Stocks, Video Resource, Case Study, Interactive
Given the comprehensive nature of our website (full disclosure: Sometimes I forget that we have certain projects/activities/data crunches/blog posts….), teachers often ask us “OK, but what are the best resources that you can recommend?” At that point, we typically turn to Jessica and she always has a few ideas to recommend. So, this month, we asked Jessica to provide us with her “Best of NGPF” specifically for the last days of school.
The responses we got from...
Question: How Much Time Are Millennials Spending a Week On Their Finances?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jun 06, 2017
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Chart of the Week, Question of the Day, Research, Budgeting, Current Events
From USA Today story about how millennials are stressing about their financial situation (and spending time at work on it):
The irony of course is that you would expect with all the fintech apps out there that millennials would be spending LESS time working on their financial matters. Raises a few interesting questions:
Are they stressed out because they are spending so much time on it or are they spending so much time on it because they are stressed?
What financial activities are they...
Article: How Online Shopping Makes Suckers of Us All
By Tim Ranzetta
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May 15, 2017
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Article, Behavioral Finance, Research, Budgeting, Purchase Decisions, Current Events, Ethics
Rather long (about 15 minute read) but intriguing article from The Atlantic that provides great context for trends that I have blogged about the growth of online shopping (here and here). The article describes how in this era of “big data” retailers are harnessing consumer information to price discriminate and obliterate the concept of a fixed price.
Here are a few excerpts:
Death of fixed price: “This could be seen as the final stage of decay of the old one-price system....
Interactive: How Did The U.S. Government Spend A Few Trillion Dollars In FY2016?
I thought Econ teachers might like this interactive website. Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO and owner of the L.A. Clippers (A $2 billion purchase) has done a public service by harmonizing data from federal, state and local governments and putting it all on a website, USA Spending.gov (note that this interactive may move here this summer).
So, how did the federal government spend $3.85 trillion in FY2016? Note that on the website, you can scroll your mouse over the individual elements to...
Question: What Does It Mean To Be An Adult?
An entertaining question to get a discussion rolling with your students. Note the number of items at the top of the list that are related to finances (e.g., paying own bills, full-time job, financial assistance…). How many are covered in your class?
From BuzzFeed:
...
NGPF Podcast: Tim Talks To Co-Creator of "Spent" Game, Jenny Nicholson
By Tim Ranzetta
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Apr 27, 2017
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Budgeting, Activity, Behavioral Finance, Research, Current Events, Activities, Podcasts
I first heard about the game Spent from podcast guest, Helaine Olen. She described it as one of the best simulations in how it immersed the player into what it feels like to live “paycheck to paycheck.” After playing the game in our offices, we agreed with her, wrapped an activity around it with discussion questions and added it to our Interactive Library. Teachers are glad we did since we are constantly getting feedback like this about the impact of the game on students:
It helped...
Chart of the Week: What Are Your Two Favorite Platforms for Watching "Television?"
By Tim Ranzetta
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Apr 19, 2017
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Budgeting, Research, Payment Types, Purchase Decisions, Current Events, Chart of the Week
The answer to this question has budgetary implications given how the cost differential between the platforms. If you are a millennial, your top four platforms, based on a recent survey, are:
Netflix
Cable TV
Hulu
Amazon Prime
Hat tip to VisualCapitalist for this infographic:
Questions for your students:
What are your two favorite platforms to watch television? How about your parents/guardians?
What are top rated platforms for millennials? for non-millennials? How do they differ?...
Question: Would You Rather Have $1 Million Or $5,000 Monthly In Retirement?
Interesting WSJ article that has a behavioral finance bent to it. Before I give you the answer, write down your own response to this question. Your choice will explain a lot about how you think about money. First, the reasons those two choices were given was no accident. According to the article, the $1 million lump sum and $5,000 monthly payment are roughly equivalent when it comes to annuity pricing. So what does your choice tell you?
Choose $1 million and you suffer from an...
Interactive: What Do Consumers Spend Their Money On?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Apr 04, 2017
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Activity, Question of the Day, Research, Budgeting, Purchase Decisions, Current Events, Math, Activities, Excel activities, Interactive
If you are a data geek, you will love this interactive tool/data visualization from Flowing Data (be sure to click on the link to take advantage of the interactive nature of the tool):
Let me provide some context for what you are looking at. Here are the data sources:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (using data collected by the Census Bureau) estimates spending patterns over time and across demographics, through the Consumer Expenditure Survey. BLS released midyear estimates today. Spending on...
What does that cute, cuddly, adorable pet actually cost you?
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Apr 04, 2017
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Activity, Budgeting, Lesson Idea, Featured Teachers, NGPF Fellows
Today, we’ve got a special treat — a guest blog post AND a teacher-generated resource — straight from NGPF Fellow Sue Suttich of Tigard High School (OR). Read on for a great activity on calculating the true cost of pet ownership!
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Each year in my Wealth Management class I have the students make a vision board. We talk about goals and what they want in life. Then they each write some short, medium and long-term goals and turn those goals into a...
