Question of the Day: What percentage of Americans cannot come up with $400 to cover an emergency?
Answer: 41%
Questions:
Are you surprised by this number? Why or why not?
What are some emergency expenses that could amount to $400?
How do you think the 41% cover this emergency cost if they don’t have money saved to cover it?
Your friend says that saving is for chumps. He asks you “Why would you want to save money when interest rates that banks pay for savings is so low?” Convince him that saving money is a good idea.
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for...
What I'm Reading this Weekend......May 26-28
By Beth Tallman
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May 25, 2018
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Current Events, Personal Finance, Student Loans, Economics, Savings, Paying for College
A long weekend so the list and a couple of the articles are a bit longer.
Savings and Wealth
I plan to dig into this one more this weekend from an NYT opinion piece by the authors of a study on wealth inequality and families. (There is a link to their paper in the article, if you want to really take a deeper dive.)
Think having a million dollars in the bank makes you rich? Not according to bankers: bankers define rich as $25 million.
The number of 401k millionaires at the end of the first...
Digging Deeper: Retirement's Difficult Choices (Part 1)
I have been noticing many articles in recent weeks discussing a wide array of issues surrounding retirement and end of life decisions, from when to stop working (if you stop working), when to draw Social Security, where to live, and even planning your own funeral! I am not sure if there are more articles out there given that 10,000 baby boomers hit 65 every day, or if I am just much more attuned to them as my husband and I are getting serious about planning the logistics of our...
NGPF 2018 Summit: FinTech Panel with RaiseMe, FamZoo and Stockpile
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May 11, 2018
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Podcasts, Current Events, Investing, Savings, Paying for College, Behavioral Finance
What follows is the FinTech Panel from the 2018 NGPF Summit in San Francisco, California. As educators, we know how challenging it can be to keep up with all of the innovation occurring in the financial sector. To help make sense of it all, we invited Namrata Ganatra from Stockpile, Bill Dwight from FamZoo and Thea Lee from RaiseMe to this panel moderated by NGPF's own Jessica Endlich. You will learn about their innovative products which help students manage their spending, start investing and...
What's New With.......Savings?
Savings Rate
The most recent data for February shows the US savings rate increased slightly to 3.4% but has been markedly below average rates for a year.
According to a recent Bankrate survey, 20% of Americans surveyed aren’t saving anything, inspite of record unemployment.
Interest Rates on Savings
The bottom line here to shop around for a good rate, and include online banks in that search.
We start this section with a video explaining why rates at banks haven't increased more....
Question of the Day: What percent of American bank deposits are controlled by online banks?
By Tim Ranzetta
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May 02, 2018
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Question of the Day, Savings, Current Events, Research, Compound Interest
Answer: 8% (but growing almost 3X faster than American deposits over all)
This chart demonstrates why their growth should continue to outpace traditional brick and mortar banks. The interest rate they offer on their savings accounts has continued to rise almost matching Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. Meanwhile interest rates at traditional banks....remain close to 0%.
Questions:
Why should you care about interest rates when choosing a bank?
Would you consider using an online...
Digging Deeper: Saving and Investing – its Simple but not Easy
We all know we should save money, and we know that we should invest some of what we save, but that doesn’t mean everyone is disciplined enough to “pay themselves first” rather than waiting to see what’s left at the end of the month. Once we do invest, human nature and emotion often work against us in making good investment decisions. For example, if we have an investment that is doing well, our inclination is to stay in it, rather than (more rationally) to sell some...
Question of the Day: What percent of Americans are contributing to a retirement plan (e.g., 401(k)) offered by their employer?
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Mar 14, 2018
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Question of the Day, Savings, Research, Retirement, Investing
Answer: 49%
Questions:
What do you think prevents workers from contributing to a retirement plan?
Retirement seems a long way off. Why do you think it is important to start investing when you are young?
What advice would you give someone in order to convince them to sign up for a retirement account?
If you were told that your company would match the amount you put into a retirement account, would that convince you to participate?
Click here for the ready-to-go...
Financial Education Explained by Danielle: Your Savings is Not a Backup Checking Account
Saving money wasn’t my forte when I was younger. Between my babysitting and summer jobs, I’d save up as much money as I could. Then I would use it to pay for family and friends’ birthday presents, school related costs, and outings with colleagues. I rarely asked my parents for money growing up because I wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible. The only problem was that I consistently depleted my savings account by transferring money to my checking account. In hindsight,...
Guest Post: Don't Forget The Joy of Saving Those First Paychecks
Thank you to NGPF Fellow, Diane Mondoro, who shared this observation with us with the following note: "I had an experience today with my son at the bank that I wanted to share with you, because it gave me pause and changed the way I think about my teaching. I'm sharing it with you - I don't know if anyone is in the same boat as me, but I often feel like parents today don't want their kids to work. Here's my reasons why they should."
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My son recently got his first...
Question of the Day: What percent of Americans spend more than they earn?
Answer: 54%
Questions:
Do you think people who have a volatile income find it easier or tougher to budget for their expenses? Explain your answer.
What do you think causes people to spend beyond their means?
What are three ways they can start to remedy this?
How do you think a person’s spending habits impact their ability to save?
What are some consequences of spending more than you earn?
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you...
Digging Deeper: What goes up must come down, or not?
This week Beth digs deeper on the stock market, recent economic growth, tightening labor markets and whether our growing federal budget deficits should keep us up at night. While all economic indicators seem to be flashing "green," last week's stock market tumble might signal less rosy times ahead (or maybe it's just a brief respite after a sharp rise in January). Beth asks some great questions to spur classroom discussions!
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Anyone else concerned about how long the...
What's New With Saving?
The New Year is still relatively new which means lots of suggestions on how we can save more..thanks to Beth for curating another awesome set of articles about savings trends.
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Suggestions for more successful savings:
Just before and after the new year, personal finance professionals are trying to provide helpful guidelines to help your success with your financial resolutions. Here is the advice from three of them:
Here's “7 essential rules of...
Question of the Day: What is the most important asset held by Americans with a net worth of less than $1 million?
Answer: Their home
Questions:
Define net worth in your own words.
Is a home an investment? Why or why not?
Given that most people take out a home loan (a.k.a. a mortgage), how would you calculate whether a home is an asset or a liability?
What are two observations you have about how the assets a person owns changes as their net worth increases?
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your...
Question of the Day: For the 61% of kids who get an allowance, what's the average weekly amount they receive?
Answer: About $16/week
Questions:
If you currently receive an allowance...
Do you have to do chores to earn it?
Do you save any of it? For a larger purchase or save in a bank?
How long have you been receiving it?
If you don't receive an allowance currently...
Did you ever receive one?
Do you have a job and earn money that way?
What experiences do you have with earning and spending money?
Click here for the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the...
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