Avoiding the Credit Card Monster (video)

These lecture/discussion notes have been prepared to allow educators a guided outline to discuss credit card management issues with high school and first year college students. The associated 10-minute video should be shown to the class prior to presenting the lecture. If you have found this site from an Internet search and would like a copy of the video, please refer to the closing section for contact information.

After you have become familiar with the contents of these notes, feel free to skip around or even omit sections, according to what you feel will work best for your class. Depending upon the degree of discussion within the class, this classroom activity could provide from one to three hours of interesting classroom discussion.

Prior to finalizing the video, focus groups of high school students and educators were shown the video. This process produced some interesting results, many of which we used to improve the final product. One finding that is of interest to the educational component of this program, was the variation in students' level of understanding about credit cards. For example, some students did not know that you are allowed to accrue an unpaid balance and others did not see any problems with using credit card checks (or courtesy checks). Therefore, as discussed below in the introduction section, it is important to gain an understanding of the level of each of your students' credit card knowledge to ensure they all have a solid foundation of the concepts and terms used before beginning your lecture

• Debt Management for College Students (powerpoint presentation)
• Credit Card Lecture and Discussion Notes
• Need a Credit Card & How to Protect Your Credit
• Credit/Debt Management Information