What's in Your Wallet?

Three more days… and half days at that!  Which really just means babysitting and coming up with “educational activities” for the children to do between the parties, grade level plays/musicals, and awards celebrations.  What’s a teacher to do?

Well, I actually DID do something for the past week that I hope and pray will be a life lesson for my fourth graders.  (And it did tie in with our Math standards!)  I borrowed from Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University.  (If you don’t know about him, you need to!  My husband and I took his class last year.) My students learned how to budget, write checks and use debit cards, and were introduced to the evil “Overdraft Monster” and his partner-in-crime, the “Interest Oppressor”.

Below is a copy of the checkbook and Debit Card we made.  (Sorry the quality isn’t that great… took it with my cell phone!)

It was great teaching them about how debit cards are much safer and have less risk than the evil credit card.  They even started calling it the “C Word” and yelled it out whenever I said the word “credit card”!  We calculated how much the “Interest Oppressor” charged if you only made your minimum credit card payment each month… and were shocked that a $199.00 IPod Touch would actually be $225.00 and would take one year and three moths to pay off!  You might not even want it anymore!  You might want a new version!

These children learned the value of saving their money and the idea of delayed gratification.  It was funny hearing the stories they told about their parents…  Made me think I need a few parent/teacher conferences!  (Or maybe not… Pawley’s Island is calling me name…)