Work Pants Finance: The Miners Go to B-School

This case is based on the real-life experiences of Matt Miner, who completed his MBA at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in 2009. After completing his degree, Miner realized that he and his growing family needed to prepare better financially for life post-MBA. This realization prompted him to pursue a program of household savings that would allow his family to be debt-free within five years. The case provides a short narrative along with exhibits containing quantitative information and assumptions. Students can work with the information and assumptions to address whether the Miner family could be debt-free within five years, even in the face of significant debt accumulated in the pursuit of Miner's MBA degree. Miner and his wife are contemplating significant household budgetary changes at the end of the third calendar quarter of 2010. The case is motivated by management accounting student anecdotes over many years, where the students claim to learn critical financial concepts in the course, yet they do not fully apply their learning to their personal lives. It also introduces a brief connection of management accounting to behavioral economics, specifically the literature on behavioral nudging via meaningful metrics that capture obscure information.