• Business for Today

    This semester's course will satisfy the NJ graduation requirement for “Financial, Economic, Business and Entrepreneurial Literacy.” 

    This course will begin with understanding the difference between a want and a need, describing how limited resources relate to wants and needs, identifying business activities that are used for products and services, analyzing factors that motivate businesses, and explaining the relationship between businesses and consumers. Students will understand the basics of supply and demand, the role scarcity has in the economy, learn to create a product, make profits from their product, how to produce their product, and understand what a patent is and when it is required. 

    Students will understand the difference between small businesses and large corporations, the pros and cons of each establishment. Students will be able to define investing and distinguish it from saving and trading, identify reasons for investing, including outpacing inflation, analyze how compounding builds wealth over time, and reflect on how investing contributes to wealth inequality. Students will be able to describe what stocks are, how you can earn profit from stocks, the risks of investing, summarize long-term trends in the stock market, analyze the performance of individual stocks over time, and consider how personal values may influence investment decisions. Students will be able to explain what a bond is, the pros and cons of investing in bonds, understand the various factors that can influence bond prices such as interest rates, identify the difference between an individual bond and a bond fund, and read a bond fund fact sheet.

    Students will be able to explain what risk is and its role in investing, and analyze effective strategies to manage investment risk, and identify which strategies you might use to manage risk when you start investing. Students will be able to explain the difference between active investing and passive investing, identify a variety of popular investment funds including mutual funds, index funds, exchange traded funds, and target date funds, and read a fund fact sheet for an index fund and target date fund. Students will be able to arrange companies to create a diversified mutual fund or index fund, evaluate how the composition of a mutual fund or index fund is associated with risk and reward, and analyze the composition of the S&P 500.

    Students will be able to discuss best practices on how to prepare for the psychological elements of investing, determine your investor profile based on time horizon and risk tolerance, discuss specific investing strategies, understand what a brokerage account is and how to open one, and demonstrate your understanding of investing strategies by creating a simulated portfolio. Students will be able to investigate how investing can be a powerful tool to meet your retirement goals, explaining why most Americans cannot rely on Social Security and pensions alone for retirement. Explore factors that can impact how much you might need in retirement and your ability to meet your retirement savings goal. Students will be able to explain the advantages of a 401(k), analyze who has access to 401(k) accounts, compare different types of retirement accounts, including both Roth IRAs, traditional IRAs, a401(k)s, and pensions, and simulate signing up for a 401(k) or IRA account.

    Students will be able to discuss the function and growth of robo-advising, along with its relationship with human investment managers, explain the function, pros, and cons of micro-investing, identify best practices to use when evaluating a mobile investing app, understand the capital gains tax and how it applies to gains realized through modern investing tools, and compare modern investing tools.

    This course will end with an in-depth discussion on different types of insurance, including auto, health, house and renter's insurance. Students will compare different types of insurance and different providers. Students will analyze the benefits, co-pays, and coverage offered by different plans.