Interactive: Does a state's cost of living impact the minimum wage set by that state?
While the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 hasn’t changed since July 2009, many states have gone ahead and independently made changes to their minimum wage levels. This interactive from Flowing Data shows the progression of these changes from 2008-2019.
When it comes to the minimum wage, states fall into four different classifications:
States with higher minimum wage than Federal
States with same minimum wage as Federal
States with lower minimum wage than Federal (Federal...
Question of the Day: What was the average price of a new car sold in June 2021?
Answer: $42,258; Up 6.36% from June 2020
Questions:
What has caused the price to increase so much on new cars?
What happens to the value of a car once you drive it off the dealer's lot?
Do you think about cars as an investment? Explain.
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.
Behind the numbers (Kelley Blue Book):
Average New-Vehicle Prices Hit All-Time High, According to Kelley Blue...
Top 5 Interactives Posts: Summer 2021
By Brian Page
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Sep 29, 2021
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Interactive, Behavioral Finance, Budgeting, Career, Checking Accounts, Insurance, Savings
Each week on the NGPF blog, we highlight a new, engaging interactive. In each of these posts, we summarize the interactive, provide suggestions for classroom discussion, and include a complementary NGPF student activity or teacher professional development opportunity on the topic.
Here are the 5 most popular interactive posts from the summer of 2021:
#1 Dark Patterns At Work: Do you ever feel like you are being manipulated on websites? Unfortunately, dark patterns are all too...
Interactive: Making Budgeting Simple and Illustrative
It can be a challenge for students to visualize what money can buy during a budgeting activity without investing significant class time to allow for students to research each choice. The Ohio Lifestyle Calculator budgeting tool is a simple way for students to have a pretty good idea of what they can buy with their dollars in suburban, rural, and urban areas in Ohio. In an ideal world, there would be a lifestyle calculator for every state. If you're worried that students will have a tough...
Question of the Day: Where are more people moving: cities or suburbs (2021)?
Answer: Suburbs (91% of suburban counties saw more people moving in than out)
Questions:
What do you think are two factors that may be leading to this migration to the suburbs during Covid?
Where do you think you would like to live after you leave home: cities or suburbs? Explain your answer.
Where do you think the cost of living is higher? Explain your answer.
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.
...
How to Hook Your Athletes in Personal Finance Class
My Classroom is a short NGPF podcast series devoted to supporting the efforts of teachers. This summer the NCAA allowed student athletes to begin profiting from their own Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) -- sending shockwaves throughout the world of amateur athletics. Your high school student athletes probably already know this and are interested.
Our expert guests today will share all you need to know about NILs and how to use them to hook your athletes to learn personal finance.
Joe...
What's New With Budgeting (2021)
Budgeting Methods Getting Attention
It may be tempting to focus on one type of budgeting method when teaching students about budgeting, perhaps what works best for us, or what is fairly easy to adopt. Budgets are meant to help us stay on track for whatever our goals are, but with different goals, come different needs, and budgeting is therefore not one size fits all. Given that only 47% of Americans actually keep a budget (according to a 2020 National Foundation for Credit Counseling...
Question of the Day: What is the most popular shopping website for teens?
Answer: Amazon (and it's not even close!)
Preferred online shopping websites of teens in the United States in spring 2021
Questions:
Do you shop online at all? If so, what is your favorite website?
How much of an impact does social media have on your online purchases?
Are there items that you would prefer to purchase in-store vs. online? Explain.
Amazon has such a commanding lead over other websites. Why do you think so many teens choose Amazon for online...
Interactives: Diving into the Details of the Cost of Living
Where you live has a dramatic impact on your cost of living. As you will see below in the first interactive, a $50,000 earned in New York doesn't go nearly as far as a similar amount in South Dakota. This is an important concept for students to grasp as they consider where they want to settle after high school or college.
Now on to the interactives you can use with your students...
Interactive #1: This interactive uses Regional Price Parity (RPP) which estimates how much more or less...
Reading List for August 27-29
By Beth Tallman
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Aug 27, 2021
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Current Events, Economics, Cryptocurrencies, Budgeting, Behavioral Finance, Checking Accounts
Banking
Curious about how banks are doing with overdraft fees? Overdraft fees dropped during the pandemic in 2020, but have jumped back up 40% over a year ago. (BankingDive).
Budgeting/Behavioral Finance
Ally Bank survey shows about half of adults are not talking discussing finances with their partner and launched a program to try to address this. PRNewsWire
Tik-Tok partners with Shopify to add in-app purchase link. Sounds like a dangerous development for users susceptible to FOMO and...
Interactive: A Simple Tool to Weed Out Fake Amazon Reviews
ReviewMeta analyzes Amazon product reviews and filters out reviews that our algorithm detects may be unnatural.
Amazon sellers have found all kinds of ways to "game the system" to artificially inflate their products' ratings (and also to artificially lower their competitors' ratings). A significant portion of the Amazon reviews and ratings you see are NOT from legitimate, typical shoppers like us. Many of the reviews are biased (from family/friends of the seller), incentivized (the seller gave...
Reading List for August 20-22
By Beth Tallman
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Aug 20, 2021
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Current Events, Economics, Budgeting, Investing, Student Loans, Retirement
Economics
Retail sales dropped more than expected in July. (CNBC) But there are signs that back to school shopping for 2021 has rebounded, and may help August numbers. (NRF.com)
Goldman Sachs economists have cut back their third quarter GDP projections due to the resurgence of Covid/Delta variant. (Reuters)
2020 was the year of the entrepreneur. Startups jumped 24% over the previous year according to Census data. (NYT)
Here is this week’s data-heavy suggestion. A Data Scientist from the...
Reading List for August 6-8
Update 8/8/21: Department of Education extends student loan payment freeze one more (last) time until January. (NPR)
Financial Literacy
This might be a good one to assign to the families of your students: NPR on having family money conversations.
Economics
The July jobs report came out this morning and showed an increase of 943,000 and an upward revision of June. Unemployment dropped to 5.4%, wages were up, but labor force participation was largely unchanged. Jobs are still 5.7...
Interactive: Reading a Pay Stub
This interactive helps students understand their paystubs. It's simple, engaging, and can be used in a wide variety of classrooms. Here are a few ways students will engage with the interactive:
Drag and drop activity using common paystub items and abbreviations.
Analyze and interpret pay stubs.
Calculate various prompts using pay stubs.
Here are some discussion starters and activities you can use to follow up using the interactive:
Why do you think businesses are responsible for subtracting...
INTERACTIVE: A Family Budget
EPI’s Family Budget Calculator measures the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living. Compared with the federal poverty line and the Supplemental Poverty Measure, EPI’s family budgets provide a more accurate and complete measure of economic security in America. The Family Budget Map offers a view of cost of living for a two-parent, two-child family across the United States at the county level.
Here are some discussion questions you could ask...
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