Why We Built the PAYBACK Game With McKinney
I saw this quote in a CNN Money article about student loan repayment becoming a new corporate benefit:
"When I got my salary, I thought it was so much money. But then I started making my budget and it became real to me how much my student loans would affect my day-to-day living," said Florentino, a 25-year-old single mom
The final screen that students see when playing PAYBACK shows two numbers: their monthly salary and their monthly student loan payment. Rather than wait until after graduation...
Question: How much free financial aid is lost to families who do not file the FAFSA?
Answer: $2.3 billion
The confluence of FAFSA season upon us (you could file beginning on October 1st) and our team working on an upcoming Question of the Day release is what led to the question that is the subject of this post.
From Quartz:
The US government awards federal, state, and institutional money every year to students who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and meet certain household-income qualifications. But if students don’t...
Two NGPF Interns Took On the Payback Challenge: Here's How They Did!
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Oct 13, 2017
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Paying for College, Student Loans, Savings, Activities
Donnesh:
The first quality about this simulation that stands out is how it gives the user the opportunity to blend their real life choices and starting position, with hypotheticals, to know exactly how much future decisions will cost. I saw what my potential earnings would look like with the major I’ve applied for and saw how my GPA and school really affect how much debt I’ll need to withdraw.
I played this game 4 times to see how different choices led to different outcomes. ...
What's Trending On the NGPF Blog?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Oct 12, 2017
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Entrepreneurship, Parent Conversations, Career, Credit Reports, Paying for College
Here are some NGPF Blog posts (both old and new) that are trending based on pageviews:
How Can My Students/Children Under the Age of 18 Check Their Credit Report?
Why Are Soft Skills So Important in the Workplace?
Let's Pick A Side Hustle
One Strategy To Keep College Costs Down: Graduate in 4 Years!
Blog posts categorized as "Parent Conversations"
...
Financial Education Explained by Danielle: How I Finished College in 3 Years
The National Center for Education Statistics said in a recent study that it takes undergraduate students an average of 6 years to earn their Bachelor’s degree. That’s an extra 2 years worth of tuition and university related costs that could have been saved. In all fairness, some majors like biochemistry are difficult, and it takes more time to complete them. Additionally, everyone’s college experience is different, and sometimes students take a year or two off to save money,...
Financial Education Explained by Danielle: My Student Loan Story
My parents, both alumni of Loyola Marymount University, graduated in the late 1980’s. This was a few years shy of when FAFSA was officially created. As the eldest child in my family, I was designated as their “guinea pig experiment” when it came to applying for financial aid and navigating the student loan process. As tuition for higher education has risen over 400% since the 1980’s, and I could sense my parents’ hesitation when they told me to reach for the stars...
NGPF and McKinney Launch PAYBACK, A Game To Teach College-Bound Students How to Manage Student Debt
By Tim Ranzetta
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Oct 03, 2017
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Paying for College, Interactive, Current Events, Student Loans, New Products
One of the frustrating insights from our recent research report, Who Has Access To Financial Education In America Today? was how infrequently "paying for college" (or some variant) was covered in a personal finance course. Yes, while scouring 11,000 websites and 18,000 course descriptions, college was far down the list of terms that were most frequently cited. Yet, when you consider both the gravity of the college decision (and it's long-term impact) as well as the timeliness of such information...
NGPF Podcast: Tim Talks to Jenny Nicholson, Creator of College Simulation Game, PAYBACK
By Tim Ranzetta
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Sep 30, 2017
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Paying for College, Student Loans, Career, Podcasts, Parent Conversations, Interactive
I am excited to welcome Jenny Nicholson, Creative Director at McKinney, back to the NGPF podcast (here was our earlier discussion about the game Spent). I have gotten to know Jenny quite well over the past six months as we collaborated on a game called PAYBACK (check out the NY Times article about the game here). The goal of this online simulation is to immerse students into the college experience so they can hone their decision making skills to successfully navigate the...
Are Advanced Placement (AP) Classes Worth the Investment?
Almost every high school student has been faced with the dilemma of whether or not they should take College Prep (CP), Honors, or Advanced Placement (AP) courses each school year. Albeit, Advanced Placement courses are more rigorous and time consuming, but if you’re willing to commit the effort, then you will definitely reap the benefits. The “philanthropic program” Freshman Year for Free aims at helping students study for and pass AP courses so they won’t have to pay...
Making Student Debt Decisions Personal
I want to welcome Christian Sherrill to the NGPF team. He will be laser-focused on increasing access to financial education in classrooms across the United States. This is a story he wanted to share about why he is so passionate about financial education.
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As the new NGPF documentary suggests, millennial college-educated professionals aren’t alone in having made costly investments in student loans. Lifelong educators with multiple degrees have ‘em...
Chart: How Well Do Students Estimate The Monthly Payment On Their Student Loans?
Answer: No real surprise here. They are abysmal at it.
Here’s an explanation of this scatter plot (see below) from the recent Sallie Mae report on How America Pays for College:
Separately, students seem not to be fully cognizant of how much they will repay. Students were asked to estimate their future monthly student loan payments based on the amount of loans they currently have. Similarly to 2008, a scatterplot of responses indicates little correlation between the amounts students...
NGPF Podcast: Tim Talks To Social Entrepreneur Ted Gonder, Co-Founder of Moneythink
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jul 24, 2017
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Podcasts, Paying for College, Student Loans, Current Events, Entrepreneurship
I had a great time talking with social entrepreneur, Ted Gonder, who co-founded Moneythink. Moneythink is a non-profit organization helping firstgen high school students navigate “to and through” college. Ted shares what he has learned since starting Moneythink out of his college dorm room at the University of Chicago and his personal odyssey to pursue the “road less traveled.” He discusses the thinking behind the new service delivery model for Moneythink and why the...
Question: Are College Costs Rising?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jul 23, 2017
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Chart of the Week, Paying for College, Question of the Day, Research, Current Events, Math, Economics
From WSJ (Subscription required):
Questions for students:
Create a one sentence description for the trends seen in each of the two graphs.
A friend says, “What a bummer that college costs keep rising at an incredible rate!” Using the data from the graph on the left, provide a response to her assertion.
Since 1990, all consumer prices (aka the rate of inflation) have basically doubled. Using the rule of 72, make an estimate as to what the inflation rate has averaged from 1990-2016....
UPenn "The Process" Podcast: College Rankings, SAT vs. ACT and Financial Aid Process
Part 2 of the UPenn “The Process” Podcast series continues with conversations about college rankings, whether to take the SAT and/or ACT, the Financial Aid process and the college essay (This audio is from The Process originally aired on SiriusXM 111). Here’s a summary of the notes from the podcast:
Podcast 2: The Process- College Rankings, SAT vs. ACT and Financial Aid Process
Eric Furda- Dean of Wharton School of Business & co-host Eileen Cunningham Feikens-...
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!...
