Cost Management Lessons

Ever since my niece graduated high school (Class of 2020!! Woo woo!) we’ve begun chatting more frequently in lessons that we jokingly have labeled “How to Adult”. Sometimes the sessions are quick text exchanges about topics like ‘What is excise tax?’ or ‘what is an APR?’, and sometimes we need to Facetime to dig into things a little more complex or intricate like ‘What is credit?’ or ‘What is the difference between grants and loans’? Her generation is very adept at Googling things, so I think she prefers the banter and explanations, plus I enjoy seeing glimpses of her life and evolution into a young adult. I would imagine her leap into independence will at first be in spurts, and then all at once. It’s quite fun to witness and influence as an aunt, but I bet it must be quite terrifying as a parent.

In a recent episode of ‘How to Adult’, she was trying to determine what kind of car to get and wanted me to help her estimate costs. Don’t worry, I’m not about to break down a math word problem where we factor in distance from work and hourly rate, but it certainly does resemble one of those complicated formulas in real life. We went over how to think about the costs of owning a vehicle, determining what charges would be one time vs. recurring ones. At the end of the chat, she had a good idea of how much she needed to save to purchase, register, and insure her car in year one, and how much she needed to save monthly to pay for her car in subsequent years.

Afterwards when reflecting, it was hard to ignore the direct tie into the Project University Cost & Procurement Management class. I had been working on a newer version of this class in recent weeks. I would be the first to teach the class after a long hiatus. I was refreshing the materials to match my approach to the topic and needed an example for Cost Management. The concept of the car, and the process to estimate the potential costs, can easily be applied to projects and work we manage here.

I ended up using her example in my upcoming class and it went over really well. As I hoped, it helped facilitate the cost management process in a simple and concise way. Perhaps some additional sneaky project management training with my niece will become a recurrence and I’ll have unlimited fodder for my upcoming classes. I’ve long since said that project management skills are beneficial life skills to have. Maybe she was listening.

If you’re interested in taking our Cost and Procurement class through Project University, we will be offering it in September of 2021.