Bartow County freshmen learned a valuable lesson last week \u2014 life is expensive when mom and dad are no longer paying the bills.<\/p>\n
About 1,300 freshmen from Adairsville, Cartersville, Cass and Woodland high schools \u2014 along with freshmen and sophomores from Excel Christian Academy and all high schoolers from Grace Academy \u2014 attended the Etowah Scholarship Foundation\u2019s sixth annual Reality Store Friday in the Georgia Highlands College gym in Cartersville to experience what life might be like when they\u2019re in their mid-20s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Before leaving their school, students were given life situations \u2014 occupations, incomes, marital status, children or no children \u2014 for a 25-year-old, and at the event, they had to pay their bills for a month.<\/p>\n
Salaries had a cap of $7,500 a month \u2014 or $90,000 a year \u2014 and occupations were limited to careers that could be achieved with four years of college or less; therefore, there were no celebrities and no doctors, lawyers or anyone else who needed more extensive education.<\/p>\n
The purpose of the daylong event was to give the teenagers a better understanding of the financial responsibilities that come with adulthood and to show them that the choices they make now will affect their quality of life in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to make it, when you leave mama\u2019s house, you\u2019re going to have to pay your own insurance,\u201d said event Coordinator Brenda Cooper, customer service representative for Century Bank of Georgia in Cartersville. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have set up your own student loans [payments], and you\u2019re going to have to have a car. Then you find a place to live, and then you get furniture for it. You\u2019ve got to buy your own groceries and that kind of stuff. And we have life unexpected events. Things pop up \u2014 flat tires, washing machine goes out, this kind of stuff, or you may even get a lottery ticket. ... We\u2019re trying to prepare them for what they\u2019re going to see outside in life and make them stop and think now what kind of classes [they need to take to get the career and income they want].\u201d<\/p>\n
The process is designed to make students suffer now rather than later, Cooper said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of them say, \u2018Well, we\u2019re having to suffer and go get another job,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201c\u2018Well, we want you to suffer on paper and not in real life.\u2019 We want them to suffer. I\u2019d rather them suffer here than to get out in the real world and have to go back home to mama or something like that or get two or three jobs like some of them. But we want them to understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The students visit each of 13 stations in payment order: bank and taxes, student loans, child care, health and life insurance, transportation, housing, groceries, utilities, clothing, furniture, nonprofit, life\u2019s unexpected events (where they randomly drew an event that happens to them) and entertainment. And if they didn\u2019t spend their money correctly, they paid a visit to the out-of-money table to pick up extra jobs.<\/p>\n
On the way out, they stopped by for a little guidance from the financial advisers.<\/p>\n
At the stations, they had to make such decisions as what type of housing they could afford, what kind of insurance they needed and what kind of car to buy.<\/p>\n
Cooper said she encountered a student who had three kids but wanted a Mustang.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201c[I said,] \u2018You know you have to have a car seat for two of these,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201c\u2018You\u2019ve got three kids, and you\u2019re going to put all three of them in the back seat of a Mustang?\u2019 See, make them stop and think about their choices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brenda Worley from the Cartersville Woman\u2019s Club saw a lot of surprised teenagers at the student loans table.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think some of them are shocked that it costs so much money to go to college,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen they get a master\u2019s degree, we\u2019re giving them a payment of $470 [a month], which is a chunk, and they are a little shocked. And it\u2019s a 20-year loan so that\u2019s a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n
But members of the military who found out they didn\u2019t have to pay for school were \u201cvery pleased about that,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Karen Boone from Shaw Industries and Clive Smart from the Kiwanis Club of Cartersville helped students maneuver through life\u2019s unexpected events.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can be anything from an illness, doctor visit to medication to their dog is sick and [needs] the vet; their washing machine died, car repair,\u201d Boone said.\u201d But then they can also have a positive unexpected life event like a scratch-off ticket or they were willed some money that they weren\u2019t expecting, those type of things. So it\u2019s really kind of just things that you haven\u2019t planned for in a day-to-day budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the typical comments they heard from students were \u201cWell, I don\u2019t have enough money for that\u201d or \u201cWhat am I supposed to do now because I can\u2019t pay for that,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Smart said he saw \u201cnot a single student who\u2019s preparing to put money back for their old age.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they don\u2019t start preparing for old age, they\u2019ll spend their old age in poverty,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the kids are quite surprised how expensive it is to live.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time students got to volunteer Amanda Lanham\u2019s station, they had little or no money for entertainment, especially coming from the unexpected events table, and they were \u201cnot happy about it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hard because they would have a washing machine broke or whatever, and they\u2019d have to repair it or have plumbing problems so they wouldn\u2019t even have enough money to fix that,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so then, of course, coming over here, they ain\u2019t gonna have enough for entertainment so they\u2019d either have to go borrow money or just do without. So they were not prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lanham added the lessons taught in the Reality Store \u201creally needs to be taught in a curriculum for at least one semester.\u201d<\/p>\n
Savannah Edwards from Johnny Mitchell\u2019s Smokehouse saw her share of down-and-out students at the out-of-money table, where they pick up part-time jobs to earn extra income.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re surprised that their occupation and salary didn\u2019t carry them as far as they wanted to go,\u201d she said. \u201cThey thought they could splurge on the entertainment packages, Six Flags tickets and all that, so they ended up here, having to get a second job to pay their bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also offered them some advice on how to avoid working two or three jobs when they get older.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2008tell them they\u2019ve got to make better decisions along the way, cut finances back where they can, don\u2019t splurge on the expensive furniture and all the added extras they don\u2019t need and just stay with it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Adairsville High freshman Monica Deloera became well acquainted with the out-of-money table.<\/p>\n
The nurse was making $1,785 a month and had to get part-time jobs at least twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince I\u2019m single, I didn\u2019t have enough money,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
And what did she learn from the event?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat I\u2008need to probably get married and get him to help me pay stuff,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
AHS freshman Vidal Diaz earned $6,607 month working in agricultural food and natural resources.<\/p>\n
He said he was able to have money left at the end of the month by \u201cspending the money on the right things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t always have to buy the most expensive things,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you do, you wind up being in debt or not having money left over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicolas Vargas, also from AHS, was a video game designer with a salary of $6,757 a month.<\/p>\n
He said he ended up with about $1,000 left \u201cby buying stuff that\u2019s not too expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicolas said he learned that \u201ceverything can be expensive, and I have to work for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt taught me a lot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
AS SEEN IN THE DAILY TRIBUNE NEWS:\u00a0http:\/\/daily-tribune.com\/newsx\/item\/7233-reality-store-teaches-freshmen-adulthood-is-tough<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bartow County freshmen learned a valuable lesson last week \u2014 life is expensive when mom and dad are no longer paying the bills. About 1,300 freshmen from Adairsville, Cartersville, Cass and Woodland high schools \u2014 along with freshmen and sophomores from Excel Christian Academy and all high schoolers from Grace Academy \u2014 attended the Etowah […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5122,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5121\/revisions\/5122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}