Oak Hill, WV (WOAY) – “I’m going to be in generational debt!”
That was one Fayette County eighth grader’s verdict after trying to balance a household budget. The debt was only on paper, part of Get a Life, a simulation program the West Virginia Treasurer’s Office brings to eighth graders.
“That’s what this is, is a budget game,” said Eric Blankenship, a regional treasury representative with the West Virginia Treasurer’s Office. “And they have to actually go in and write down how much each payment is a month and you subtract it down and see how much in the negative they go on the first job and how much they could possibly be on the positive on the second job.”
Greyson Hess, an eighth grader at Oak Hill Middle School, said the exercise did not go entirely his way.
“Today I learned that you have to be careful with how you spend money. Cause I think I got scammed,” Hess said. “I paid full price for a lot of stuff when I could have paid just, like, $50 cheaper if I would have done monthly payments, and now I’m in debt.”
Blankenship said many students walk away with a new understanding of what their families pay.
“It’s eye opening for these kids as far as, I didn’t realize my parents were paying that much for this, that much for that. I mean, we hear that a lot,” he said.
“My parents … I think they always have money. Like, I can do whatever I want to do, whatever I want,” Hess said. “But now I’m looking at this and I’m realizing house, car, pay for bills, insurance, health. I mean, random broken toe, food. It’s expensive.”
Groceries tend to surprise students most, according to Blankenship, and the larger goal is to show them what different levels of education can mean for a paycheck.
“They are blown away by groceries. They’re like, there’s no way groceries cost that much … So that way they know that a high school diploma is not going to get you where you want in life. And it’s going to be really hard to survive,” Blankenship said.
For Hess, the lesson already has him rethinking his career plans.
“Yeah, I realized I don’t want to be a fitness center attendant. I want to be an engineer, because that’s what’s on the back of my paper. And I make a lot of money,” he said.
