FINANCIAL HOUSEKEEPING
Teach kids money and math
Parents are always looking for good tools that help teach children money values while keeping the education light and fun.
At www.moneyopolis.org – a site created by Ernst & Young – children go through a series of questions and exercises, earning money along the way so they can help Xerbie the alien fix his spaceship so he can leave Moneyopolis and return to his home planet.
Along with basic financial-planning concepts, the site teaches decisionmaking and logic, math and computer skills. Though the site is designed for children in grades six through eight, younger kids can learn from it too, although they might find some of the math questions particularly challenging.
SHORT COURSE
Breakpoint
In many forms of investing, sales charges or fees are reduced or waived when the consumer reaches a specified breakpoint. Effectively, this practice makes sure that a financial firm’s “best customers” – or at least its biggest ones – get the best prices.
In mutual funds, for example, some funds have a breakpoint beyond which investors move into a special share class – a class usually populated by institutional investors – where the expense ratio is cut by 25 percent or more. Sometimes, achieving the breakpoint may require signing an agreement to invest money regularly (monthly for a year) in order to receive reduced sales charges.
In stocks, breakpoints can occur at various levels along the commission scale, so that the fee or commission gets smaller (on a percentage basis) as the size of the trade increases.
