Financial Reality program teaches students to handle curveballs

The Get REAL Financial Reality Fair for high school students isn’t just about learning to balance a checkbook, manage money and handle credit cards.

It’s also about learning what their parents deal with in managing the family’s finances, said Marisa Fulgham, Wrangell branch manager for Tongass Federal Credit Union, which is organizing the event.

“We give each kid a life and a budget. … (Then) we threw curveballs at them.”

Those include expected expenses, such as housing, groceries, medical bills and a vehicle, and maybe the unexpected, such as a child, Fulgham said.

The financial fair is open to middle school and high school students, and is scheduled for Tuesday morning, March 12, at the school campus.

Someone from the Financial Reality Foundation, a nonprofit organization that partners with Alaska and Hawaii credit unions, will lead the Wrangell event, Fulgham said, assisted by 10 or so local volunteers staffing different stations of life in the room to help advise students.

“They guide the kids, like ‘maybe you don’t need that Ferrari with four kids,’” she said.

The financial guides in the room will include credit union staff and volunteers from Wrangell businesses and borough employees.

Each student will receive an information sheet on their make-believe life as they enter the room, then spin a wheel at each station to learn how their life changes. “You just got a promotion, or you just got a divorce,” Fulgham said.

“We’ve had students be like, ‘I didn’t know this is what my parents deal with all the time,” she said of comments received after the financial fair in past years.

Though this is the first year for the Financial Reality Foundation to help out, similar educational fairs were held in Wrangell in 2017 and 2018, she said, before disappearing during the pandemic.

“This will be my first year helping out,” the branch manager said. “This was something I did not know even existed.”

 

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