Competitions
- Capitol Hill Challenge
- In this competition, teams of students use a software called the Stock Market Game.
- Students are given $100,000 and need to use it to make as much money as possible in a certain time frame, through various investment opportunities.
- This is a national competition and 10 teams across the nation can win a trip to Washington D.C to meet the Congressperson of our district; They will also be recognized at an awards reception.
- https://www.stockmarketgame.org/capitol-hill-challenge.html
- InvestWrite
- This is an essay competition that focuses on a topic involving finance.
- There are awards at various levels.
- https://www.investwrite.org/
- EconChallenge
- This is a multiple-choice competition with the team answering the most questions correctly about economics winning.
- https://econchallenge.unl.edu/Florida/Welcome
- FinanceChallenge
- This competition is almost identical to the EconChallenge, but focuses on finance.
- https://financechallenge.unl.edu/Florida/Welcome
In-school Activities
- In-School Virtual Stock Market Game
- Using a virtual stock market through free apps such as Best Brokers, we will host in-school stock market competitions.
- In this app, you are given $25,000 for investing.
- Students will use this money to invest in any company of their choice.
- We will set a time period for students to compete.
- At the end of the time period, the students who have the most wealth will win a small prize.
- Monopoly
- We will have games of monopoly once or twice a month, as a fun way to implement topics discussed in the lessons.
Lessons
- Monopolies presentation
- We did a presentation about monopolies to enlighten students in about what exactly monopolies were. Some examples of monopolies, such as Henry Ford’s monopoly on automobile industry and John D. Rockefeller’s monopoly over oil (Standard Oil Company), were discussed.
- We also talked about how monopolies can be acquired: having much more affluence, resources, and/or technology than other corporations, so these colossal corporations can mass produce goods and sell them for much cheaper than all of the less wealthy, smaller firms. Because their goods become so cheap, everyone starts buying from the huge corporations and all of the smaller ones go out of business, sadly. Then, when the giant corporation has extensive control over the commodity, they have absolutely no competition, and they are the only company selling the commodity. Therefore, they can raise the prices drastically, which is extremely detrimental to consumers and their wallets. It is especially devastating when the item that the company holds a monopoly over is a necessity that everyone needs to survive, because for something like diamonds, if there was a monopoly over them, people could just stop buying diamonds and it wouldn’t be the end of the world. However, for something like oil (for gasoline), cars, cell-phone providers, food, water, or television providers, just to name a few examples, there is much more demand for these commodities, which exacerbates the deleterious effects on consumers.
- We contrasted monopolies and oligopolies: Oligopolies, in contrast with monopolies, are when just a few large companies have ultimate power over an industry. We gave them examples of oligopolies, such as cell-phone providers (T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc.-at the time where T-Mobile and Sprint had not yet become unified).
- We also explained how monopolies occur when gigantic companies buy up all of their competition, like in Agar.io, when one player engulfs all of the other circles and expands dramatically in the process. We connected this with mergers and acquisitions: When these happen, 2 separate companies become just 1, allowing that one company to gain much more power in the market. Mergers are when two companies agree to work together and help each other out, while acquisitions are when one company takes over another and the one taken over ceases to exist.
- Investment into Gold Presentation
- We taught the students about investment into gold in the form of a presentation. For example, we discussed how investors invest into gold as a safehaven in times of turmoil. This is because the price of gold increased during times of turmoil, and many factors can contribute to this. For example, if a country is experiencing war, other resources are much more likely to be consumed, so the price of gold increases.
- We taught the students about investment into gold in the form of a presentation. For example, we discussed how investors invest into gold as a safehaven in times of turmoil. This is because the price of gold increased during times of turmoil, and many factors can contribute to this. For example, if a country is experiencing war, other resources are much more likely to be consumed, so the price of gold increases.
- Health Insurance Presentation
- We discussed the ins and outs about health insurance. We talked about premiums, deductibles, and copays, as well as the relationship between the 3. We explained how health insurance is like a gamble, and gave club members a challenge to figure out which plan is better: one with a low deductible, but high premiums and co-pays, and another with a high deductible, but low premiums and co-pays.
- It turned out that there was no correct answer. It was solely dependent on chance which one the better option would be. This is because if you are choosing a plan with a low deductible, but high premiums and copays, you hope that you will not have to go to the doctor that often, since then you would only have to pay the cheap deductible once and the expensive copays just a few times. However, if you are choosing a plan with a high deductible, but low premiums and copays, you hope that you will have to go to the doctor many times, because then you will have to pay the high deductible, but the premiums are cheap and every time you go to the doctor, you won’t have to pay that much for copays, so you will get your money’s worth out of it.
- However, in reality, you have absolutely no idea how many times you will need to go to the doctor, which is why health insurance is such a gamble. We also discussed that nowadays, many companies are granting their employees complimentary health insurance and we elaborated on this more with some examples, like Walmart and McDonald’s. Additionally, we talked about Medicare and Medicaid, which were government-sponsored health insurance programs.
Money Matters 