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3: Finance

  • Page ID
    113135
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    We have to work with money every day. While balancing your checkbook or calculating your monthly expenditures on espresso requires only arithmetic, when we start saving, planning for retirement, or need a loan, we need more mathematics.

    The material in this chapter is from Math In Society by David Lippman.

    • 3.1: Percents
      In the 2004 vice-presidential debates, Edwards claimed that US forces have suffered “90% of the coalition casualties” in Iraq. Cheney disputed this, saying that in fact Iraqi security forces and coalition allies “have taken almost 50 percent” of the casualties. Who is correct? How can we make sense of these numbers? Percent literally means “per 100,” or “parts per hundred.”
    • 3.2: Simple Interest
      Discussing interest starts with the principal, or amount your account starts with. This could be a starting investment, or the starting amount of a loan. Interest, in its most simple form, is calculated as a percent of the principal.
    • 3.3: Compound Interest
      With simple interest, we were assuming that we pocketed the interest when we received it. In a standard bank account, any interest we earn is automatically added to our balance, and we earn interest on that interest in future years. This reinvestment of interest is called compounding.
    • 3.4: Annuities
      For most of us, we aren’t able to put a large sum of money in the bank today. Instead, we save for the future by depositing a smaller amount of money from each paycheck into the bank. This idea is called a savings annuity. Most retirement plans like 401k plans or IRA plans are examples of savings annuities.
    • 3.5: Loans
      In this section, you will learn about conventional loans (also called amortized loans or installment loans). Examples include auto loans and home mortgages. These techniques do not apply to payday loans, add-on loans, or other loan types where the interest is calculated up front.
    • 3.6: Which equation to use?
      When presented with a finance problem (on an exam or in real life), you're usually not told what type of problem it is or which equation to use. Here are some hints on deciding which equation to use based on the wording of the problem.
    • 3.7: Solving for Time
      Often we are interested in how long it will take to accumulate money or how long we’d need to extend a loan to bring payments down to a reasonable level. Note: This section assumes you’ve covered solving exponential equations using logarithms, either in prior classes or in the growth models chapter.
    • 3.8: Credit Cards
      Credit cards are used by a financial institution to give users access to a loan based on revolving credit. When a credit card is used, the account holder is borrowing money from the institution to make a purchase. The maximum a user can borrow is set by the financial institution based on the credit worthiness of the account holder. Each billing period the account accrues interest for any remaining balance based on the average daily balance. The interest is compounded each each billing period.
    • 3.9: Basic Budgeting
      Budgeting is an important step in managing your money and spending habits. A budget is a plan to balance income and expenses, which may also include saving money for future use. To create a budget you need to identify how much money you are spending. Some expenses to keep in mind when creating a budget are rent, car payment, fuel, auto insurance, utilities, groceries, cell phone, personal, gym membership, entertainment, gifts, dining out, medical expenses, etc.
    • 3.10: Extension- Taxes
      Governments collect taxes to pay for the services they provide. In the United States, federal income taxes help fund the military, the environmental protection agency, and thousands of other programs. While very few people enjoy paying taxes, they are necessary to pay for the services we all depend upon. Taxes can be computed in a variety of ways, but are typically computed as a percentage of a sale, of one’s income, or of one’s assets.
    • 3.11: Income Taxation
      Many people have proposed various revisions to the income tax collection in the United States. Some, for example, have claimed that a flat tax would be fairer. Others call for revisions to how different types of income are taxed since currently investment income is taxed at a different rate than wage income. The following two projects will allow you to explore some of these ideas and draw your own conclusions.
    • 3.12: Chapter Review and Glossary
    • 3.13: Exercises


    This page titled 3: Finance is shared under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by David Lippman (The OpenTextBookStore) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.