Three of the USM SIFE team who participated in the 2008 Duel on the Heights (l-r) Kristopher Lalemand, Sara Willey, and Jason De Campos. Not pictured is Kelly O'Connell.
On January 25 through 27, four members of the USM SIFE team participated in the annual “Duel on the Heights,” a personal finance competition sponsored by the University of Arizona’s SIFE team and hosted at Boston College. The students were seniors Kristopher Lalemand, Sara Willey, and Kelly O’Connell and junior Jason De Campos.
The competition required six regional New England colleges—USM, Syracuse, UMass Dartmouth, Franklin Pierce, St. Anselm, and Worcester State—to formulate a comprehensive solution to complex case. It involved a couple where the breadwinner had just retired and whose current income did not cover current expenses. Other financial issues included some credit card debt, two car loans, a mortgage, a medium-sized pension and a money market account.
The USM SIFE team participants had to learn everything the could on such topics as mortgages, social security, Medicare, investment portfolios, taxes, and many other topics to formulate an intelligent, effective and reasonable answer to the couple’s problem. With only thirty-six hours to learn the case, formulate an answer, and build and practice a nineteen-minute presentation, the teams did not get much sleep.
Nevertheless, the USM team did very well, finishing in second place behind Syracuse. For their efforts, the USM students took home a prize of $1,500.
