If your house is anything like mine, you’re still digging out from under the mountain of catalogs that arrived in December. Although online shopping has taken the lead in off-site buying, those glossy catalogs are still used to grab your attention and entice you to send Aunt Susie a basket of Wolferman’s muffins, or your brother-in-law a snazzy gizmo from Sharper Image. When surveyed, I discovered that all of our seniors had shopped online and paid for their purchases with the click of the mouse, but few had ever had to wrestle with reading the small print on an order form in a catalog and write a check to pay for their purchase. As a culminating activity to our unit on banking, the students in Personal Finance had that opportunity during their last class in December.
Each student received a catalog and a sample checkbook (courtesy of our friends at Susquehanna Bank) and told that they could buy anything in the catalog up to $250. The class was cautioned to be aware of possible sales taxes and shipping fees. Completed order forms and checks were reviewed for accuracy. The class discussed why some vendors must charge sales tax and others have no such legal requirement in Maryland.
With the advent of electronic banking and money management software, this generation of young people may not have to struggle over pencil and paper bank reconciliations, but they do need an understanding of how to monitor their money as it travels through the banking system. Our classroom catalog shopping experience was an enjoyable way to help demonstrate that lesson.
~Jan Schein
CFO, Instructor Personal Finance
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