4.1 Introduction and key concepts (EMG45)

Financial documents and tariff systems often occur in the context of personal and household finance. For example, you may pay a monthly amount of money for your cellphone account, or your parents may pay a monthly amount for the electricity used by your household. You should receive a till slip with every store purchase you make and if you have a store account, you may well receive monthly accounts that you need to pay off. Understanding how these documents and systems work, and how to manage them is an important part of being able to manage your personal finances.

In this chapter we will learn about:

• financial documents relating to personal and household finance, including electricity and water bills, phone bills, till slips and account statements.
• what different items and amounts on these bills and statements represent, and how different values have been determined.
• tariff systems, including municipal tariffs for electricity, water and sewage, telephone tariffs and transport tariffs for busses, taxis and trains.
• how to calculate costs using given tariffs and to draw graphs of tariff systems, using our knowledge of graphs from Chapter 2.