Mad City Money goes to Lincoln

March 6, 2010: The Shinnston Development Authority supplied the volunteers to be the vendors for Fairmont Federal Credit Union’s presentation of Mad City Money on March 3 at Lincoln High School. We arrived at 7:30 A.M. to set up tables with our “merchandise” and receive our instructions – checks had to be filled out correctly to be accepted. If the check was incorrect, they were to be sent to the Credit Union to find out what was wrong with the check. The students arrived to begin mad City Money at 8:15.  The students were assigned professions and salaries. They were told how many children they had, the ages of the children, and whether they were married or single. They were given work sheets for their budgets and a book of checks to use to pay for their purchases. The students were required to visit every vendor (needs) except the “Mall” which was an optional vendor – for the wants. They had choices to make at each vendor. They had to buy a house, a car, clothes (one girl bought her clothes but forgot to buy clothes for her “child” and had to return to the clothes vendor), food, house stuff (your host was this vendor for furniture, appliances, and décor), baby items for those with infants, and entertainment.Shinnston’s Office Supervisor is shown studying her pages of choices the students had to choose from. At her table, they had to choose 2 activities for each person in the family over age 3 and could not choose more than one “free” activity per person.The goal of this exercise was to show the students how to budget, write checks, and see what choices they are going to have to make and how easy it is to get in over their heads. To make things even more real, The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate in a jester’s hat visited each student with one of life’s surprises – possibly a good one, you had a successful garage sale and made $189 or a bummer, you got a $150 speeding ticket (and the check had to be written and taken out of the budget). This was a great (and educational) way to spend a morning.