Program This Saturday at HCC Teaches Financial Literacy Through Game of Life

Perhaps Monopoly wasn’t the ideal game for teaching kids how best to spend their money.

Passport to Financial Literacy – a free event held this Saturday – seeks to give teenagers a truer representation of financial responsibility.

They won’t be navigating themselves around a game board, buying properties and relying on the roll of the dice. Instead, the teens will move around a room, make financial decisions and, as they go on, learn what consequences those decisions will have on their lives.

“This event is an interactive simulation where teens get to create their constructive adult life,” said Michelle Glassburn, president of makingCHANGE: A Financial Wellness Center, a Columbia-based nonprofit organization that focuses on financial education programs.

“They get to make some choices about how far they’re going to go with their education and their career, and based on those choices they’ll get a salary and have to make all those spending decisions that their parents have to make,” Glassburn said. “They’ll learn about taxes and affording a home and transportation and insurance and budgeting, credit, savings, philanthropy and identity theft.

“It’s kind of trial through fire. They’ll figure out it’s really not as easy as their parents make it seem to make ends meet every month.”

The program, which is being held at , takes the teens through 20 stations hosted by community organization and businesses.

“They’re not just going to be making a home choice or a vehicle choice, but will be with a realtor or a car dealer,” Glassburn said.

The teens will record their decisions along the way.

“So they might get to station four and decide and choose the shiny red Mustang for their car, and then they might get a few stations down the road and figure out they don’t have enough money to insure it or to put food on the table because they’ve blown all their money,” Glassburn explained.

And then the teens can get a “do-over,” perhaps choosing a used car instead.

“Most people don’t get that option,” added Glassburn.

The program targets teens with the hope that this education will prevent them from needing serious financial help later in life.

“We deal with adults so often who are so deeply in distress,” Glassburn said. “It was a natural focus for us to try and talk to folks before they make those errors, those decisions that get them into trouble.

“The kids coming through this event will be getting their first credit card offers and buying their first cars in the very near future. Having this event under their belts makes a whole lot of sense.”

Passport to Financial Literacy is being held Saturday, Feb. 5, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Howard Community College, in Duncan Hall in the Kittleman Room. Registration is not required but is encouraged. To register, go to www.hocopassporttofinancialliteracy.eventbrite.com