SAN ANTONIO -- Financial choices can be overwhelming, even for adults. Now, a new educational venue called Finance Park is designed to teach young people the ins and outs of fiscal responsibility.
Seventh and eighth grade students from Page Middle School in the San Antonio Independent School District spent the day Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at Finance Park, a joint venture of Junior Achievement of South Texas and Capital One.
“Financial literacy is not tied to a specific generation,” commented Mark Koshnick, market president of Capital One in San Antonio. “Without any sort of basic groundwork, it’s easy to get in trouble and make the wrong decisions.”
We all know personal finance is more than just balancing the checkbook. At Finance Park, students visit 18 separate kiosks representing costs of daily life, everything from health care to housing, even the fun decisions like dining out. They learn everything comes from a budget.
“I think it’s a good idea because we’ll learn ahead of time how to pay bills and how to take responsibility for the house and cars and money and water and electrical and everything,” said 13-year-old 8th grade student Daneja Delgado.
Adult volunteers guide the youth through their Financial Park experience.
“Kids really get the sense that they are adults for the day and they really are engaged in the process and take it very seriously,” said Joseph Burke, president of Junior Achievement of South Texas. “And they’re very proud to have balanced the budget by the end of the day.”
The idea is to arm these students with the knowledge they need to calculate a sound financial future.
Finance Park is located at the corner of San Pedro and Oblate in an old Blockbuster Video store. The program will reach more than 50,000 students over the next five years.
