Unit 3 "Planting" Money
Part Ⅰ Getting ready
A The following words will appear in this unit. Listen carefully and study the definitions.
1. downside:
2. treat:
3. expertise:
4. robust:
5. chore:
6. disposable:
7. owing:
8. hands-on:
B Listen to a mini-talk about some concepts of investing. Complete the chart.
Investing is a way to make money with your money. First, you have to earn money. As a kid, you get money from allowance, gifts, services, or from selling goods such as lemonade. Try to save some, if not all of this money. The next step is to make your money grow through investing.
There are two main reasons why you should invest. The first is to stay ahead of inflation and the second is to achieve financial goals. Inflation causes the increase of prices. When a Big Mac goes up from $1.20 to $1.50 or when gas goes up from $1.30 to $1.70 a gallon, we say that is inflation. You need to make more money just to keep up with the rising cost of living.
Financial goals can be separated into two types: short-term goals and long-term goals. The first refers to the things that you need or want now or within the year, such as a bike, a computer, or a video game. Generally, it takes less money to reach these short-term goals. However, long-term goals are expensive and require some planning. They are things you need or want in a few years or more, for example, going to college, buying a house, and even starting a business.
Investing is like "planting" money. A small amount of money invested will often grow to a larger sum over time. You've heard the phrase, "Time is money." With investing, time also makes money.
Although investing can make money with money, the downside of investing is that there is a risk of losing your money. The key to investing is to minimize the risk and to maximize the financial reward.
Part Ⅱ National Teach Children to Save Day
A．Listen to the report. Supply the missing information.
On Thursday, April 17, "National Teach Children to Save Day," 2 500 bankers will make 5 000 presentations in elementary school classrooms across the country to teach children how to save money.
"Bankers are committed to investing in the future of children because we want them to be able to make smart financial decisions throughout their lifetime," said American Bankers Association Executive Vice-president Donald G. Ogilvie. "Education and money management skills are keys to a better life."
The ABA Education Foundation declared "National Teach Children to Save Day" as a way to show banking industry support for teaching children money management skills and encouraging them to save money for the future. In 1996, Americans saved only 4.9% of their disposable incomes, compared to 1970 when they saved 8%.
The Foundation coordinated a great effort with state bankers associations to encourage bankers to participate in "National Teach Children to Save Day." It also prepared a resource kit with tools to help bankers make presentations in classrooms. More than 125 000 students will be part of this national initiative.
The ABA Education Foundation also offers tips for parents to foster the savings habit in their children:
? Give them an allowance with the understanding that part of it goes into their own savings — a first step towards learning to budget.
? To make their savings visible and real, have them build up savings in a piggy bank. Then help them open their own bank savings account, and have them make deposits each month.
? Use their monthly statements, or the record in their savings passbooks, to show them how their money is multiplying.
? For every dollar your children earn, encourage them to spend 25 cents on what they want or need now, put 25 cents away for a bigger-item purchase later and save or invest the rest. (That's a 50% savings rate!)
? Make savings and investing fun. Give your children play money to "invest" in stocks they can track in local newspapers. If the stocks go up, pay them in more play money; if the stocks decline, they pay you.
B Now listen again. The following are some of the tips for parents to foster the savings habit in their children. Match column A (Purpose) with column B (How to do).
Part Ⅲ Credit cards
A Listen to a mini-lecture about credit cards given by Young American Bank. Complete the outline.
Outline
Credit cards are an important part of American life. Whether we have a positive or negative image of credit cards, they are an inescapable part of our finances, either now or in the future.
Without a credit card, it's just about impossible to rent a car, make a hotel or airline reservation, or even get a membership at a video store.
Since credit cards are so important, yet so many people are in financial trouble because of them, we feel education is extremely important. We want to show our customers that credit cards are not toys; they are an important responsibility.
A credit card can be used to "charge" things like clothes, tapes or CDs, dinner at a restaurant, or maybe a hotel room while you're on vacation. When you charge something, you are agreeing to pay for your purchase at a later date. Basically, you are buying something now and paying for it later.
Credit cards come with a "limit." Let's say your credit card has a limit of $100. That means you can charge up to $100.00 worth of items on your card. You will get a statement in the mail each month that lists the charges you have made. You will also have to make a payment every month that you have a balance owing.
Since we're about educating our customers on the realities of credit and credit cards, we're going to be perfectly honest. First, using a credit card can be very expensive. Banks don't offer credit cards just because they like you. They offer them because they make money when customers use credit cards.
How do they make money? When you charge something on a credit card, you not only will have to pay for what you bought, but you will also have to pay interest, or a finance charge, if you don't pay your bill in full by the due date. The finance charge is your extra cost for having something now and paying for it later. The interest rate on a credit card can be 15% or even higher. If, however, you pay your bill in full every month by the due date, you do not have to pay interest. And of course, we highly recommend you do that!
It's very easy to make lots of purchases on your card and then be surprised at how quickly they add up when your bill arrives! If you're not careful when you use a credit card, you could find yourself in a lot of debt. And it always takes much longer to pay it off than to spend it.
You will also want to be careful about buying things with credit card you wouldn't normally be able to afford. Again, you can get in over your head and end up paying a tremendous amount of interest.
However, when used correctly, credit cards can be very helpful. It's sometimes hard to do certain things without a credit card. Credit cards are also helpful for emergencies and are good for travel. Some credit cards even insure your purchase, meaning if something is lost, stolen, or broken, it can be replaced.
We believe the best way to become responsible with credit is to learn through hands-on experience. If you begin at a young age with a low limit, you won't be likely to blow it and get in financial trouble later on.
B Now try this: listen to a more authentic version of the material.
Part Ⅳ More about the topic: How do Children Spend Their Money?
A. Listen to the report. Supply the missing information on Mr. McMill's survey.
Teenagers and children everywhere like to buy toys and special treats if they have the money to spend. Indeed studies show there are quite a few young consumers in the world today. But there are some real differences from country to country. An American business school professor has been traveling around the world studying just how children tend to spend their money. He is trying to predict the international market place trends of the future.
University Professor James McMill can tell you what type of consumers your economy is going to have in 15 years just by watching the way your children spend money today. He has been making spending predictions like that for thirty years now and is considered so accurate in the United States that advertising agencies frequently call upon his expertise. Over the last decade Mr. McMill began studying children in cultures outside the United States. His most recent stop was Beijing, China, where he studied the consumer behavior patterns of 780 children between the ages of 8 and 12, whose parents' jobs range from professionals to unskilled workers. Mr. McMill said he anticipated finding very little consumer behavior among China's children. But he was wrong.
"Those children are participating in the market place. Typically there is one child in the household and the child has two, four, six parents. In other words there are two parents and four grandparents, and they're receiving a great deal of money. But I think it was a surprise to me how robust the economy was, you know firsthand, and how robust the participation in the economy was by the children."
Mr. McMill says most of the money Chinese children spend comes from gifts from their parents and grandparents. In addition, he says, 15% of the (Beijing) children he surveyed are given money for performing household chores and another 6% receive money for work outside the home. China's children average three and a half store visits a week during which they average one and a half purchases. He estimates children in China receive only 66% as much money as their U.S. counterparts and they spend only 40% as much as children in the United States because Chinese children save more of their income than U.S. children. Mr. McMill says the number one purchase for children in both the United States and China is the same thing — snacks.
"But when you get to number two then, for our children it's play, it's toys, it's play items; for their children it's reading material we'll call it. When you get to number three item, for the Chinese children, it will probably be school supplies and for our children it will be clothing. And when you get to the number four for their children it'll be toys, play items because they like to play too, and for our children it will probably be electronics of some sort."
B Now try this: listen to a more authentic version of the report. Finish the findings of the survey.
Part Ⅴ Do you know ...?
A Listen to a passage about the origins of money. Fill in the blanks with missing words.
When we think of money today, we picture it either as round, flat pieces of metal which we call coins, or as printed paper notes.
However, the earliest method of exchange was barter in which goods were exchanged directly for other goods. Problems arose when either someone did not want what was being offered in exchange for the other good, or if no agreement could be reached over how much one good was worth in terms of the other.
Valuable metals such as gold and silver began acting as a medium of exchange. Governments then decided to melt down these metals into coins. By the seventeenth century people were leaving gold with the local goldsmith for safe keeping. Receipts of ￡1 and ￡5 were issued which could then be converted back into gold at any time. Soon these receipts were recognized as being "as good as gold" and were readily taken in exchange for goods. Goldsmiths became the first specialist bankers and their receipts began to circulate as banknotes.
Nowadays, however, notes are not usually used to buy expensive items such as cars. The buyer is more likely to write out a check which instructs his bank to transfer money from his account into the account of the seller. Hence bank deposits act as money.
B． Now try this: listen to a more authentic version of the material. |