Understanding Credit Card Offers - Outline

Slides are tagged by opening line.

1. "Credit cards are a great convenience" Short videos lead to a discussion of good credit practice, in preparation for a more extensive exploration. (first few slides)
2. "Suppose you want to buy a computer" describes an offer from a credit card company.
3. "Your initial balance on the credit card" sets up three scenarios for paying for an item on this card.
4. "For each of the three scenarios" invites students to make some initial calculations by hand to see what happens in each case.
5. "Questions for thought and discussion" asks for a preliminary judgement on these three scenarios before moving on to deeper analysis.
6. "Of course, if you have enough money" asks students to move to a spreadsheet (provided) or online calculator (links provided) to find out what happens over the lifetime of the loan.
7. "Questions for discussion" asks students to compare the three scenarios to each other, and to the original offer made by the company.
8. "The true cost of a loan" makes explicit ties with the math topics of linear and exponential growth.
9. "What people usually do" invites students to use the spreadsheet or online calculators to explore more complex human behavior and the financial results.
10. "One factor that definitely affects" is a comparison of interest rates.
11. "Some people feel" concludes the module with a video that balances the first two shown, and opens a discussion of the larger aspects of credit card use.

< Back to Understanding Credit Card Offers. >