Is Your Car Buying Decision Hijacking Your Retirement Savings Plans?
We know that your students love talking/thinking/dreaming about cars (even if data suggests it's less than previous generations). In fact, our Buying a Used Car activity in our Bonus Unit is a student favorite. This activity can be used to pivot into a conversation about retirement savings also. How? The Wealth of Common Sense blog makes that connection between car buying and retirement savings. From a Ben Carlson tweet:
Looking at prices for new SUVs and came to the realization this...
Interactive: Do you have a designer's eye? OR Can you tell which item costs a $1,000 more?
Ok, I have never been accused of having a designer's eye and answering the five questions in this Marketplace quiz provided further proof of that. I thought this short interactive might lead to interesting conversations about why we buy the things we do and all the psychological factors that play into purchasing decisions (e.g., status vs. function)
From Marketplace:
Questions:
Did you do better or worse than you expected picking out the higher-end furniture?
What surprised...
Question of the Day: What's the average monthly payment for a new car purchased in 2018?
By Tim Ranzetta
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Jun 05, 2018
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Question of the Day, Budgeting, Purchase Decisions, Current Events, Research
Answer: $523
Questions:
When do you expect to buy your first car?
Will you buy new or used? Explain your answer.
What are other costs that you can expect to pay for a car beyond the car payment?
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.
Behind the numbers (from CNBC):
In the first quarter of this year, the average monthly loan payment for a new vehicle climbed $15 compared with last year, hitting an...
Question: What percent of the time do people click the first item on Google search results page?
By Tim Ranzetta
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May 30, 2018
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Research, Question of the Day, Advertising, Behavioral Finance, Purchase Decisions
Answer: 24% (mobile) - 32% (desktop)
Legend: CTR = Click through rate
Questions:
Describe your search habits when looking for info for a school project and how many links you typically click on.
What are your search habits when looking to purchase an item? Do you search on a specific website or search from a general search engine (e.g., Google or Bing)?
What are advantages/disadvantages of limiting your search to the first 4-5 items from a Google search?
Click here for...
Finance Explained by Danielle: The Price of Convenience is Only a Subscription Away
From service subscriptions like Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify to monthly box deliveries like Dollar Shave Club and Birchbox, we live in a world where convenience and instant gratification are becoming more intertwined in our daily routine. Consumers increasingly don't need to shop at brick and mortar stores anymore since most chain stores now have online platforms to sell their products—not to mention expand their audience reach by offering FREE nationwide shipping (often within 2 days)....
What percent of 15-19 year olds value experiences more than possessions?
By Tim Ranzetta
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May 09, 2018
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Question of the Day, Behavioral Finance, Budgeting, Purchase Decisions
Answer: 46%
Questions:
How would you answer the question: "What do you value more: experiences or possessions?" Explain your answer.
Do you think your answer to the question will change over time? Why?
Research seems to indicate that greater joy comes from purchasing experiences rather than "things." Why do you think this is the case? What can you get from experiences that you can't get from things?
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the...
Question of the Day: Who has the most subscribers: 1) Netflix, 2) Amazon Prime or 3) HBO?
Answer: HBO
Questions:
What makes subscription businesses so valuable compared to non-subscription businesses?
In five years, which of these three companies do you think will have the largest subscription counts? Explain.
Which of these three companies do you think is most indispensable? Explain your answer.
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.
Behind the numbers (recode):
After years...
Question of the Day: What percent of online shopping carts are "abandoned" before checkout?
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Apr 09, 2018
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Purchase Decisions, Behavioral Finance, Budgeting
Answer: 77%
Questions:
Why do you think so many people fill their online carts with items that they don't end up buying?
Have you ever done this? Explain the reasons you chose to abandon the items.
Retailers have great ways to track how you move around their website. How might they try to get you to buy after you have abandoned items?
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.
Behind the numbers...
Question of the Day: What's the cost (in $s) of not shopping around for an auto loan?
Answer: About $1,300.
Questions:
Does it surprise you that two people with the same credit score might have loans with different interest rates?
Why do you think that most people don't comparison shop for auto loans or mortgages?
Give an example of a time that you compared prices on an item you wanted to purchase.
Did you save money?
Describe the process of comparing prices. Was it easy or difficult? Explain.
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for...
Question of the Day: Toys "R" Us foot traffic went from 52 million people in 2008 to _____________ million in 2017?
Answer: 29 million (a 44% drop).
Questions:
Where did all the shoppers go?
Toys R Us recently announced that they are closing all of their stores. After seeing the answer to this question, are you surprised?
What is your opinion of the shopping experience in a Toys R Us store?
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.
Behind the numbers (statista)
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Like these...
What I'm Reading This Weekend (March 17-18)
Careers
What do researchers tell us about the smartest ways to manage email at work...so it doesn't manage you?
For a raw and realistic look at waiting on tables, watch this NYT video – told by the women doing it. Some lessons in here for all who contemplate taking jobs relying on tips.
NGPF released this Number Chug "Covering Tax and Tip" focused on the math behind gratuities
Robots won’t get here in time to alleviate the projected 8.2 million worker shortage over...
Question of the Day: What do consumers say is their biggest impulse purchase: food, clothes, or technology?
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Mar 15, 2018
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Question of the Day, Budgeting, Purchase Decisions, Behavioral Finance
Answer: Food (70%)
Questions:
Why do you think that food tends to be the largest impulse purchase?
What kinds of items do you consider impulse purchases?
Do you have strategies to control your impulse purchases? Explain.
What are some ways you can still treat yourself without blowing your budget?
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.
Behind the numbers (from Insider):
Most of the respondents...
Chart of the Week: How do people spend their money?
Great chart to analyze from Flowing Data:
Quick orientation: Reading up and down, you get percentage breakdowns by income group, and reading across you get average annual spending.
Questions (and you can certainly ask a lot)
Which cost item is the largest one for ALL income groups?
Which income groups have a budget deficit (i.e. spend more than they earn)?
How do individuals manage to live with a budget deficit? How do they spend money they don't have?
Agree or disagree with this...
Digging Deeper: The Sharing Economy
By Beth Tallman
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Feb 12, 2018
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Current Events, Budgeting, Article, Video Resource, Purchase Decisions
Does Collaborative Consumption make everyone better off?
This growing segment of our economy goes by many names: the sharing economy, collaborative consumption, the “gig” economy to name a few. We are talking about a vast array of goods and services where the matching of supply and demand occurs via the internet, with the help of technology (smartphones) and some computer application. [Editor's note: The "gig" economy has also changed the nature of work and the concept of...
What I'm Reading This Weekend (1/27-1/28)
By Beth Tallman
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Jan 26, 2018
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Current Events, Purchase Decisions, Generosity, Behavioral Finance, Investing, Article, Index Funds, Research
Thanks to Beth for curating another great set of articles to make us smarter about personal finance. Enjoy!
Personal Finance/Financial Capability
NYT Your Money Advisor Anna Carrns filed this report summarizing the 2017 Financial Report Card from John Pelletier at Champlain College’s Center for Financial Literacy. Are you from one of the five states that received an A: Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia? It was reassuring to see that NextGen Personal Finance was...
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