Week Three

This Week

This week was a good one as we really delved into personal finance. Students learned how to balance their checkbooks, how to compute compound interest, and heard from a real-live insurance agent (Gabe Landes of State Farm of Beavercreek) on what types of insurance policies are available to them and how to make sure they are properly insured as car owners, homeowners, and renters. They also heard about life insurance and how it works. Finally, we learned about credit and how to use it responsibly so that they stay out of trouble and use debt responsibly when they do things like open credit card accounts or take out home or car loans.

We talked today about ways you can improve your credit score. If you or your student is interested in some additional reading, check out this Forbes article on the topic.

Students asked what a good credit score was in class. This graphic does a good job explaining it.

Next Week

Up next week we will continue learning about credit and may begin looking at how to invest our savings as we discuss stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, although this may wait depending on when the Ohio Stock Market Challenge takes place. This is a fun opportunity that we do each year where students can manage $100,000 (fake) dollars in a real portfolio, buying and selling real stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

We will have a test either next week or the week after on personal finance depending on how quickly we move through the material. Tests are always announced and we always do a review beforehand.

Have a great long weekend!

~Mr. Grieve

Week Two - Also finished

Week in Review

Week two saw our first test on the basics concepts of Economics on Wednesday. Students did fairly well overall, with the average class score slightly above 85%. We also began our study of personal finance as we move now into the Microeconomics portion of this class. Students began by looking at human capital on Thursday and FICA taxes on Friday. What a fun way to end the week, I know! Here's a good video on human capital if you are unfamiliar with the term.

Upcoming Stuff 

Next week we will have our class's first guest speaker - Gabe Landes of State Farm Insurance. Gabe is a personal friend and insurance agent who has volunteered to speak to my class for the last three years and comes to talk to the students about the different types of insurance coverage they can get. We will also be diving into how to balance your checkbook and the different types of accounts you can open up at a bank, as well as other personal finance topics next week, so students should come away from the class with a good start in understanding how to manage all of the money they will be making in their high-paying STEM field jobs once they graduate from college!

I'm looking forward to next week, and as always please feel free to email me with any questions at arch.grieve@wright.edu.

~Mr. Grieve

Week one is done!

Update

The first week is finished and we are hitting the ground running in our Econ class. This past week and next students are learning about the basics of economics; Supply and Demand, the "Rational Man," incentives, and more. Students had an assignment due Friday (which is already in Gradebook) whereby they created Demand Schedules and Curves based on surveying the quantity demanded from their classmates (and perhaps even some of you) at five different price points in order to gain an understanding of how Demand differs from quantity demanded.

While we only talked about Demand and factors that influence it this past week, tomorrow we will look at Supply and Market Equilibrium. If students are having difficulty with these concepts, I'd recommend checking out Khan Academy's tutorial, which I think is really helpful.

Upcoming stuff

Next Wednesday (or Thursday at the latest) we will be having our first test on the basics of Economics.  Topics covered will include:

• Economics, basic definitions (Micro vs. Macro, types of economics, 'The 3 Questions')
• Demand
• Factors influencing Demand
• Supply
• Factors influencing Supply
• Market Equilibrium

Please take a minute and subscribe via email to the blog by typing your email in upper right-hand corner of the page, as this is the last post I will send out via email.

I hope you all are having a great weekend and look forward to our next (full) week at school on Monday!

Sincerely,

~Mr. Grieve
arch.grieve@wright.edu