In this new weekly blog post, Jessica will highlight Just One Resource from our NGPF collection that maybe doesn't get the attention it deserves. Use it this week or bookmark it for later.

[The Resource]  ANALYZE: Understanding Amortization

The Gist: Young Janet decides to treat herself to 6 weeks of South American travel before starting her first post-college job, and she's going to finance the trip using a $3500 personal loan. Her credit file is thin so her interest rate is high. Your students explore Amortization. 

The Best Parts: 

• This activity blends a complete 2-year amortization table, a Bankrate.com online loan calculator, and some good old pen and paper math to attack amortization from all sides and make sure your students understand how a fixed term loan's repayment works
• Great for math teachers, and a very logical and thorough way to teach amortization
• The activity has quite a few questions, which allow the students to change different variables -- the monthly payment, the loan term -- and see the impact; however, the activity is still quite strong even if you assign only a small portion of it. So, cut and trim to fit your time constraints or the depth of content you're trying to teach. 

-------------------------------

Want to find math related resources? Be sure to scan our Math Resource Directory!

About the Author

Jessica Endlich

When I started working at Next Gen Personal Finance, it's as though my undergraduate degree in finance, followed by ten years as an educator in an NYC public high school, suddenly all made sense.