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Home > Blogs > Hamilton Schools News and Issues > Archives > 2011 > October > 19 > Entry
Hamilton students explore the challenges of ‘Real Money’
Before his retirement from GE Aircraft Engines, Bill Merritt was a mechanical engineer, but Tuesday, he found himself hawking imaginary used cars to teach Hamilton Freshmen School students how to manage their money.
The Berkley Square resident has been volunteering for several years for the “Real Money, Real World” exercise, conducted annually at the Hamilton Freshman School by the Ohio State University Butler County Extension Office and the Hamilton City School District.
The exercise allows students to choose a career based on last year’s grade point average. The higher the GPA, the better the jobs pay. They also have a random drawing to determine how many children, if any, they need to provide for. Prior to the event, they figure out their taxes, savings and credit debt, and then spend a class period on Tuesday visiting 15 different stations figuring out how much they can afford for housing, day care, transportation and other life necessities before figuring out how much they can afford for entertainment and luxuries.
“By the time they get here,” Merritt said, “they’ve got little or no income left, so I tell them they can buy a bicycle or live near where they work.”
According to OSU’s Jackie Lankfer, it takes more than 30 community volunteers to run the program. In addition to getting the word out through Berkley Square, there are people coming from area churches and civic groups.
“It’s a way for everybody to serve the community and give back, to be a potential influence on kids,” said Kay Wilkerson, pastor of family life ministries for the First Church of God on Princeton Road. She brought seven other volunteers with her, including former Van Buren Elementary School teacher Bonnie Brooks, a member of the church’s Oasis senior group.
“I still like doing things with kids,” said Brooks, who was working the child care station. “They come here and it’s a jolt for them to find out how expensive it is, so they have to either go look for a second job or change their budget.”
Butler County Recorder Danny Crank was among a handful of members of the Lindenwald and Middletown Kiwanis clubs on hand. He was helping them find housing they could afford.
“I think it’s a very valuable experience for student to learn about money and how important it is to have a job that pays a decent wage,” he said. “They learn that it does cost money to live, and that’s a new experience for them.
“A lot of them think they can jump in and buy a big house, but when they find out how much money you’re talking about, their eyes open up and they ask me what I’d recommend.
“It’s a wake-up call,” he said.
According to Zellene Miller, the career development coordinator for the Hamilton City School District, this is the third year the event has been conducted at the Freshman School. More than 600 students participated in the day-long event.
“We hope that they understand what their parents go through when they’re trying to run a household and raise children,” she said. “We’re also trying to get them to understand that they need to do well in school, get a good grade point average, to go into certain occupations.”
Hayley Burden, who just moved to Hamilton from the Florida Keys, had a good enough GPA to land a job as a pharmacist, paying $78,000 a year according to the exercise, which she chose from the list of available occupations because it suited her real-life goal of doing something in the medical field.
“And it’s a high-paying job,” she said, so she didn’t have much trouble hanging on to some of her income. “A friend of mine, as soon as she got to day care, she was in debt.
“I didn’t notice how much things really cost,” she said of the lessons she’s taking away from the event. “My dad’s always complaining about how much groceries cost, but I want real Oreos, not the knock-offs.”
Ashley Mire, who chose being a hair stylist from her list of available jobs because it was closest to her career choice of becoming a massage therapist, had a little less luck on her $27,000 yearly salary.
“I went into the negative pretty quickly,” she said. “I’m probably going to have to change a lot of stuff.”
Even though she didn’t have to pay for child care, she still had to get an imaginary part-time job to earn another $500 a month.
“It’s really hard, even without kids,” she said.
Tommy Rinck said he had to get two part-time jobs to supplementit $2,300 monthly income as a chef.
“I really need to get a good education so I can get a good job and hope for the best,” he said, lesson learned. “I want to be a roller coaster designer or an architect,” but knows that he’ll have to have a better grade to do that.
According to Laura Mayes, math department chair at the Freshman School, teachers will follow up with a self-assessment form on how it made them feel.
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