Another Step Towards A Cashless Society...
VISA providing incentives to small business owners to NOT accept cash. From Denver Post:
For years, mom-and-pop shops and food trucks alike have shuddered at the expense of credit card transactions. It’s not uncommon, for example, for small businesses to have minimum dollar amounts for card purchases. Some still don’t accept them at all or gently inform customers they prefer cash.
Credit-card behemoth Visa launched a campaign to change that Wednesday. The campaign to go cashless — or the...
What Is the Most Common Form of Non-Cash Payments?
Answer: Debit cards (by a long shot)
From Federal Reserve (hat tip to Big Picture Blog):
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On the subject of debit cards, check out the NGPF Lesson: Pick A Payment Method where your students will learn the various pros/cons of different payment methods.
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What I'm Reading This Memorial Day Weekend
By Tim Ranzetta
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May 26, 2017
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Credit Cards, Behavioral Finance, Index Funds, Debit Cards, Current Events
I love long weekends to catch up on some reading, here’s what has my attention this week:
The Other Difference Between Jeans and Mutual Funds (Bloomberg); identifies reasons for Vanguard’s recent domination of the mutual fund industry: “The majority of funds are actively managed and 80 percent or more of them routinely fail to beat their benchmarks net of fees. Clearly, there’s an incredibly low probability that investors will get what they’re paying for. That realization...
What Are We Watching? Three Of Our Latest Curated Videos
By Tim Ranzetta
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Apr 18, 2017
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Checking Accounts, Research, Credit Cards, Savings, Debit Cards, Payment Types, Teaching Strategies
The NGPF Team is always scouring the web for videos to add to our Video Library. Here are the latest that the team has uncovered:
Pay Day 101: Direct Deposit (from Young Illinois Saves), duration of 3:48, provides a good description of how direct deposit works from the perspective of young adults:
Questions:
In your own words, what is Direct Deposit?
How can you set up Direct Deposit?
Is Direct Deposit safe?
What are the benefits?
Which of the benefits of Direct Deposit means the most to you?
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Resource Lists for Financial Educators (courtesy of Barbara O'Neill of Rutgers Cooperative Extension)
By Tim Ranzetta
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Mar 28, 2017
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Activities, Credit Scores, Career, Paying for College, Research, Budgeting, Credit Cards, Identity Theft, Personal Finance, Investing, Mutual Funds, Savings, WebQuest, Financial Literacy, Student Loans, Checking Accounts, Debit Cards, Payment Types, Stocks, Current Events, Insurance, Video Resource, Case Study, Credit Reports, Employment, Quizzes, Entrepreneurship
What does a distinguished professor do during her sabbatical? Curate personal finance resources, of course! In this blog post, Barbara O’Neill shares the fruits of her hundreds of hours of labor in putting together three awesome resource lists (see bottom of post for links to her lists), including what what she considered the “best of the best” from the NGPF library. As she describes below, the purpose of her odyssey was to replenish her “well” of creative...
Question: What Financial Products Should A Young Person Use To Manage Their Money?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Mar 23, 2017
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Writing assignment, Question of the Day, Research, Budgeting, Credit Cards, Checking Accounts, Debit Cards, Teaching Strategies
Hanging out on the Boglehead Forum today skimming the topics that have received the most replies. Forums seem so “old school” in this age of social networks (Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat) but the ones that have survived and thrived have done so for a reason. For those not familiar with the Boglehead Forum, the forum is named in honor of John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Investments, and attracts knowledgeable, thrifty investors passionate about sharing their knowledge in a variety of...
Video Resources: Avoid Those Checking Account Fees
It’s often the first financial product that a young person will use. Maybe they start with a savings account but eventually they graduate and pair their savings account with a checking account. In that process of setting up this new account, the customer will be asked (or they should be) whether they would like “overdraft protection.” The term sounds innocuous and better yet lures them in after all who doesn’t want to be protected. Have your students watch one or more of...
Question: What Is the Number One Reason Millennials Switch Checking Accounts?
Answer: No-fee ATMs
From Credit Union Times:
The single biggest reason millennials move their checking accounts to other financial institutions is to get access to free ATMs, according to new data from marketing research company Phoenix Synergistics.
The survey of 1,000 people, conducted in July and August of 2016, found that 46% of millennials who moved their checking accounts to other institutions in the last two years said they did so for the surcharge-free ATMs. Other fees were also a...
WebQuest: How To Protect that Credit (and Debit) Card!
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jan 31, 2017
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Identity Theft, Activity, Credit Cards, WebQuest, Debit Cards, Current Events, Financial Scams, Activities
I am always amazed when I am searching Google for interesting news stories about credit cards how frequently the articles detail how the “bad guys” manage to steal credit card information. Identity theft can seem like an adult problem to many teens (unless their parents or they have been personally victimized), so I thought this quick WebQuest might bring the topic home to them. I thought it would be interesting to provide an update to my earlier 2015 post titled (apologies to Paul...
Question: How Much Do Banks Earn From Overdraft Charges?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jan 02, 2017
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Activity, Question of the Day, Budgeting, Checking Accounts, Debit Cards, Payment Types, Current Events, Chart of the Week, Article
Answer: Billions!
Happy New Year! Welcome back to school. I know that banking tends to be a unit that many of you teach early in the semester so this data should prove particularly timely. I have posted on this topic several times but have some new data to report about the three largest U.S. banks and their fees from overdraft charges (from Financial Times, subscription required):
This quarterly data on the three largest banks shows how fees tend to grow over the course of the year as evidenced...
Question: How Long Does It Take a Hacker To Steal Your Credit Card Information Online?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Dec 08, 2016
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Identity Theft, Research, Debit Cards, Payment Types, Current Events, Video Resource, Credit Reports
Answer (from Newcastle University research): About 6 seconds (yikes!) [This should grab your students attention!]
From Thrillist:
According to new a paper authored by Newcastle University researchers, hackers can mine your financial information using simple guesswork, spread out across multiple websites. When the process, known as a Distributed Guessing Attack, is coupled with a specifically designed toolkit, it isn’t very hard to exploit the security systems of major e-commerce sites…...
Question: What's the Difference Between Debit And Credit Cards?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Nov 22, 2016
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Debit Cards, Credit Scores, Question of the Day, Credit Cards, Identity Theft, Payment Types, Current Events, Article
Students are often confused about this distinction between debit and credit cards. Here are some resources that help show the ways in which they differ:
Video: When You Should Use Credit Over Debit Cards (WKRG.com)
See if your students pick up on the inaccuracy in the video. The reporter says “If you lose money using your debit card, you’ll likely never get that money back.”
Video: How To Choose Between Debit and Credit (CNBC):
Article: Credit, Debit Cards not...
Infographic: What's Your Holiday Spending Habits?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Nov 17, 2016
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Activity, Question of the Day, Research, Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Payment Types, Purchase Decisions, Current Events, Activities
Ok, I know that it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet and may seem a bit early for this, but I know the planners out there want to be armed with holiday-themed content! From NerdWallet’s 2016 Consumer Holiday Spending Report:
Questions for students:
How do you plan to pay for your holiday gifts? Debit, cash or credit?
Will you create a budget to plan your spending?
What’s the best gift you have ever received? How much did the cost of the item make it special vs. the thoughtfulness...
Chart: How Do People Pay For Things (By Age)?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Nov 10, 2016
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Chart of the Week, Question of the Day, Research, Credit Cards, Checking Accounts, Debit Cards, Current Events
New Federal Reserve of San Francisco report is chock-full of graphs about payment preferences gathered from their 2015 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice. With so many graphs to choose from, I thought this one could kick-start a great discussion:
Just to orient you as to what is being measured here, this graph focuses on the number of transactions rather than the actual value. So, while the percentage of cash transactions might seem high, most of these transactions were for small dollar...
Online Bill Payments Are Easy But...
By Tim Ranzetta
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Nov 02, 2016
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Checking Accounts, Personal Finance, Debit Cards, Current Events, Video Resource
…you better triple check that you didn’t have a typo. One couple shares their story about what happened when they hit the wrong key.
From 6ABC.com:
Why this matters:
More and more bills are being paid online these days
Merchants have different policies on how they deal with credit accounts which means a refund may take time
Be sure to double and triple check before you hit “submit”..getting the decimal point wrong can cause financial heartburn!
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