Credit Card Lesson Plans

Teaching kids to budget

Teaching kids about money

• Have your kids use catalogs, websites, or printouts from websites, and comparison shop for three items, such as jeans, tennis shoes, and backpacks. Instruct them to research prices from at least four stores, finding items that range in price from cheap to expensive as well as popular name brands and generic brands.

• Have your child calculate the difference between the lowest priced item and the highest priced similar item, and record this number on their chart.

• Have your child find the average price for the items (add up all the prices, low to high, then divide by the number of items) and record those numbers on their chart.

• Have your child find the medium priced item (list the items in rank order of price, low to high, then find the item that falls exactly in the middle) and record it on their chart.

Citibank

Budgeting for beginners

The best way to reach your savings goal is to start with a budget. A budget helps you keep track of the money you have coming in -- your allowance or birthday money -- and the money you have going out, including spending, saving and possibly donating. A good way to learn budgeting is to divide your money into four clear jars labeled: Sharing, Spending, Short-term Saving and Long-term Saving. The following guidelines will help you decide how much to put in each jar.

• Sharing jar: Deposit 10 percent of your money, or $1 for every $10. Are you concerned about helping children or animals, protecting the environment or supporting a local food bank? Choose a cause that you're interested in and donate regularly. You'll feel good and the charity will benefit from your generosity!

• Spending jar: Deposit 30 percent of your allowance, or other money, or $3 for every $10. This money can be used at any time for small purchases, like a baseball or a CD. Ask your parents for guidelines on how you can spend this money, and then make your own decisions!

• Short-term Saving: Deposit 30 percent of your money, or $3 for every $10. You may need to save several months for larger purchases, such as a video game or an iPod. This jar will help you save for some cool stuff!

• Long-term Saving: Deposit 30 percent of your money, or $3 for every $10. This is where you'll save for the future. Someday you'll want to go to college or buy a car. These expenses require a lot of planning and saving!

Mortgage And UK Housing Markets Encounter Fluctuations credit cards

Mortgage lenders and property agencies have just released their latest figures for the UK housing marketplace displaying some conflicting results but the overall mood from analysts appears to be one of optimism for improvements in housing marketplace activity.

Property prices are on the rise again according to the latest survey by the Rightmove property agency website. They reported the largest average monthly home costs rise in two years throughout February to leave the average residential home asking price in England and Wales at ?201,600.

In their report, Rightmove put the record asking costs down to a shortage of sellers and increasing demand, particularly a return of buyers at the lower end of the marketplace which need to have a knock on impact further up the property ladder.

Yet Miles Shipside, Rightmove’s commercial director, sounded a note of caution, “Sellers ought to not get too ambitious or the recovery could run out of steam as affordability is over-stretched again”.

The Rightmove findings appears to stand in contrast to the figures recently released in the FT Home cost index, which shows that the, “recovery of house prices given that the Autumn has been highly muted and did not gather pace at the commence of 2006″. The FT also reported that two other separate sets of secured loans data published about the very same time, “showed mortgage lending for January was down on the prior month but ( ) higher than the figure

for January a year ago.”

The FT house price index shows a subdued marketplace rather than the more buoyant figures from Rightmove, or the lenders, the Halifax and the Nationwide. The FT believes that their figures based on Land Registry information supply an accurate representation of the market, with the figures from the lenders’ bouncing around, “in ways most unlikely to reflect reality.”

Lots of of those who are currently seeing a restrained increase in the marketplace figures are looking towards feasible future Government action through the Bank of England to increase sales. Howard Archer, the chief UK economist at monetary analyst Global Insight, feels that an interest rate cut is on the cards in the early part of 2006. Mortgage comparison website Moneynet believes that a widely expected Bank of England base interest rate cut will lead to the housing market, “obtaining a shot in the arm with a lot of individuals looking for the appropriate mortgage package to get them on the housing ladder.

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Congressional Record, V. 145, Pt. 21, November 17, 1999 to December 3, 1999