When I was a little girl my brother and sisters and I played a lot of board games. We played more cards than board games, but we still played board games. In Monopoly we had to figure out the value of property and how to get a complete set. You didn’t learn a lot about finance, though, even if you were the banker.
One of my favorite games to play was The Game of Life. The Game of Life was not an entirely accurate representation of what adult life is about, but it was pretty close. You went to school, you got a job, you got married, you bought a house, you had children, you paid taxes, and you died. There were paydays, insurance payments, disasters, and a number of other things that do actually happen. Even still, the game was just a game and in no way a lesson for life.
Students in Fairfax County are taking part in a series of interactive classes that are like a real-life Game of Life. The junior-high students are learning the basics of finance and things like the difference between a debit and credit card as well as compound interest. The program works by the children being given real life scenarios and having to play them out. The scenarios include marital status, income, children, and where they live. One student might be a single parent who is unemployed and living in government housing while two others may be married with high income jobs living in a large house in a nice area. The children are given an income and bills to deal with. They have to juggle medical bills, rent/mortgage, tuition, and utilities, everything their parents cope with daily. The program ends with a visit to the 20,000sf Finance Park Museum.
I want to go.