Credit Card Debit Reflection

Credit Card Debit Assignment – Reflection Amber McLain

The biggest lesson in this assignment is centered around financial responsibility. Credit cards accrue interest when the balance is not paid off every month, and most students do not understand the weight of borrowing money and making the minimum payment each month. By going through the different payment amounts of a loan, it truly shows the difference you can make by adding any amount to the minimum payment that you can. Ideally, the only way to avoid interest is to the pay the balance off completely each month. This is not feasible for all circumstances, so this stresses the importance of making higher payments. The math from this assignment is not limited to credit card debt – it can be applied to other types of loans as well. For myself, this is something that I am applying to my mortgage payment. We have done the calculations and determined that by making a small additional payment each month towards the principal, we will cut 10 years off our loan and save thousands of dollars in the process. Additionally, this can be applied towards my auto loan as well (though it is not significant enough for me to consider now). I believe that doing these calculations can also help you determine how much you can spend on a mortgage/car payment in advance, and make sure that you can afford the monthly payments that you are considering. The concept of exponential functions is a large part of this activity. This has expanded my thoughts on how mathematics can be applied to real life situations. It is important to teach financial responsibility, and by showing students that math can be used for things like this can improve their futures.