The Financial Literacy Project - Internal Training Services
Partners in teaching financial literacy since 1975.

YOUR CHECKING ACCOUNT has been based entirely on paper, focussing on how to enter various transactions into the checking account register and how to reconcile the account at the end of each month.  Many teachers have requested an on-line banking component for YOUR CHECKING ACCOUNT, reflecting what students will have available in real life.  This is our attempt to meet that need.  A demo is available as a choice under the "simulated ON-LINE BANKING" choice on the menu bar.  We suggest that students experiment with the demo before they stat using their "real account".

Please note that the on-paper simulation is still a complete simulation.  When the booklet has an on-line payment or transfer, the student simply records that transaction in the (paper) register.  Using the on-line simulation, the student can also sign into their "account" and go through the steps of making that transaction on-line.  The student can go on-line to check balances and review transactions by date.

 

The on-line account does the same things your financial instirution would allow you to do:

  • View transactions from January 1 through last night's processed transactions
  • View Monthly statements (available on 2nd day of following month)
  • Transfer money between your checking & savings accounts
  • Make on-line payments
  • Make on-line deposits

 

This online component of YOUR CHECKING ACCOUNT matches the paper simulation:  all of the "old-fashioned" transactions (including debit-card payments and ATM transactions) show up without any student input as processed transactions on exactly the same dates as in the paper simulation.  On-line transactions (payments, deposits, or  transfers) will only show up if the student signs in and makes the transactions.  In an effort to be a little more realistic, once a student makes a transaction he or she cannot make an earlier transaction.  Once the student makes the April 18th online payment to Verizon, he or she can no longer make the April 10th payment to National Electric.  They are, however, certainly free to make the payment to National Electric on April 18th.

Students are not limited to the online transactions in the paper simulation.  Unless offsetting transactions are made, however, the bank balances in the paper simulation will no longer agree with the online bank balances.  The first on-line transaction that the student needs to enter is a payment entered on February 1 for a payment to be made by the bank on February 3; the next one is on February 5 for a payment to be made on February 8.  A student might experiment by making a $750 transfer from checking to savings on February 12 to see what happens in terms of NSF charges or declined transaxtions in the following weeks.  He/she could then transfer the money back to checking on February 13 to get the system back to where it was.

Perhaps the biggest difference between this and a "real" account (besides the fact that no real money is involved) is that the student must tell the computer what the date is.  Obviously, when you sign into a real account the computer knows exactly what the date is.  But on November 23 the student might be signing in to make a (simulated) online payment for April 18.  When the student tells the simulation that it is April 18, then the student will only be able to see transactions processed by the bank thru April 17th.  And, like a real bank, when you sign in on April 18 you cannot make on-line payments that are effective before April 22.

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