Becoming an Informed consumer
Unfortunately for us, money doesn't grow on trees. This project was designed to help us work around that fact by becoming informed consumers. There were multiple different topics that we could focus on, everything from car loans to mortgages to life insurance policies. I chose to do my project on college budgeting. I decided on this topic because I thought that it would be the one that I would encounter the soonest, seeing as I'll be going to college in a little over a year. For my project, I created six math questions related to budgeting, a possible budget for college, and a power point that combines the two. Below are my questions, excel budget, and power point. To view a larger version of any of theses documents, click the rectangle icon in the lower right corner.
|
|
|
The Price of College Project
In the price of college project we calculated the costs and benefits of attending college. The first step of the project was to choose two different colleges and find their tuition histories. I chose to focus on Colorado College and Montana State University. There were three main parts of the project: the mathematical computations sheet, the excel spreadsheet, and the cost benefit analysis. All of these documents are uploaded below. By the third part, the cost benefit analysis, we were asked to choose one of our two colleges to focus on. I did my final project on Montana State.
Based on my estimations of the costs and benefits of college, the long-term benefits of
attending college, in this case at Montana State University, would be about $ 1,325,191.65
greater than short-term costs like tuition, fees, room, and board. These
calculations were made using a “best case” scenario, but they still reflect
that in the long run, attending college could potentially be a worthwhile
investment and needs to be honestly considered as a realistic possibility.