Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Money, Money, MOH-NAY!


Nylah A., Mimi N. and Emily O at JA Finance Park
It was such a fun learning experience to be able to go to JA Finance Park on Thursday, March 10, 2011. Throughout the last month in History class we learned about finance in the real world, such as credit and debit cards, stocks, and budgets. This program is not well known, in fact the GFS Middle School was the first class to participate in the pilot of the program. Everyone in the Seventh Grade was looking forward to this day and I know we all had a great time.

Biztown Center
The Day started off at 9:30 AM when we first entered Finance Park. It looked like a mini town, with streets, trees, and shops; for those of you have been there is was just like Biztown! We were all called to the center of the town where we were told about what we were going to do that day. First, we were assigned a home base, a place where you could organize your files and complete your expenses worksheets.
GFS Girls Balancing Their Budgets
Once we were there we were assigned a life card, this included your job, number of kids, marital status and income. I was very fortunate to get a good job. I was an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Compliance Officer and had a Gross Annual Income of $53,758. I had two kids (6 years and 9 years) and was single. I was lucky to get such a good job that paid well. Some people got Jobs like a Pet Caretaker and were paid as little of a Gross Annual Income of $20,000 a year. After we got our life scenarios, we began to budget the amount of money we could spend a month in categories like Housing, Transportation, Dinning Out and Electrical.
After we budgeted our money, we went around to all of the business to collect sheets explaining about what you could buy from this business. Next, with the sheets that we had collected, we decided the amounts we wanted to spend in each category. For Example, the worksheet for housing showed you six housing options within your price range that you could purchase. Lastly, we went back to all the businesses to make our final payments.

Overall, Finance Park was a fun and educational learning experience.
As Julianna M. said, “It was a great experience and an important life lesson.”
Also Jackie M. commented, "I thought it was really cool the way it was set up. It taught what I need to know to do when I am older and gave me an important life lesson. I think it is a topic that everyone should know, because after college you will have to use it.”
I’m sure we will be able to put this knowledge to good use in the future!
-- Text and Photos by Emily O. (Class of 2016)

12 comments:

  1. Great job Emily, I love how you described the seventh grade's experience. The pictures are great.

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  2. This was a great learning experience and I would recommend future seventh graders do it.

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  3. @Jackie M. I totally agree! We learned so much about finance and balancing your money.

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  4. It was really fun but a lot of sitting, but still really fun!! It was also a great learning experience!

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  5. This sounds very fun! Good job on making it very detailed. Were there like kids there because in your post it says you had two children?

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  6. @Mia M. I you life situation card it lists things about your life like your children, job, marital status and more!

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  7. Love your post, you described finance park really well.

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  8. I thought that it was a lot of fun learning how to budget my money and buy my own houses, cars etc. It was a lot of work but it was all worth learning. This will definitely help me in the future
    -Sydney K

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  9. It was really fun! Too much sitting down though. I never knew how hard it was to be an adult or parent!

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  10. I should of never told my dad that I learned how to do taxes...now he wants me to help him do them! - Jenny Y.

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  11. I had such a great time at Finance Park! It taught me great life lessons, and I will never forget them!

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  12. Sounds like fun!

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