Travis R. Martin, CPA, MBA

You can demonstrate the power of anchoring to your classes using this in-class activity, which comes directly from the book Predictably Irrational.

This budgeting lesson consists of a PowerPoint discussion, two activities, and a budgeting project – suitable for 9-12 grades.

In this activity, the students research and recommend hotels based on a set of criteria I give them. The students then pitch their hotel ideas using a PowerPoint presentation. From these presentations, I pick my hotel room. The winning student (or group), gets a “mystery gift bag” from the hotel, which consists of everything I can take from the room and lobby without going to jail.

This unit teaches students the basics of consumer rip-offs using interactive activities that demonstrate real-life scams.

We have all been there at some point. You receive a bill in the mail that just isn’t right. Or maybe you purchased a product and were less than satisfied. Knowing how to handle these situations is part of being a smart consumer. In this activity, students will learn the process for filing a complaint.

When we discuss comparison shopping, I have the students practice the concepts by researching an item that they all have access to – cell phones. The class learns how to compare different service providers, as well as how to use Consumer Reports and internet sites like cnet.com to research product reviews.

The average family spends over $6,000 on groceries a year. Aside from big ticket items like houses and cars, food represents one of our biggest expenditures.
Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to save money at the grocery store. My Personal Finance classes participate in two different activities that help drive home this point.

Nearly all teens are into tunes (some so much that they stay tethered to their iPod 24/7). With this in mind, I like to work a few music-related activities into Computer Applications.

Flip to the front of nearly any high school Economics textbook and you are sure to find a discussion of Economic Systems and Economic Goals.

When my classes discuss these topics (see PowerPoint notes), I like to incorporate a few simple activities.

In this activity, students get hands-on with target markets by creating a fictional person that is representative of a given target market.