By David on May 18th, 2009

EverFi Teaches Young People About Money Through Online Games.

While I am not a proponent of encouraging students to spend even more time playing games online, even I might be convinced by what these guys have come up with. EverFi is an online financial literacy education platform/game that is designed to teach Generation Y about being financially responsible. From CNN:

EverFi offers a five-hour series of Web tutorials that let students explore real-world settings, from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to a used-car dealership, while absorbing lessons about saving money, earning interest and managing debt. As students acquire new skills, the software encourages them to play a SimCity-style game in which they control characters’ spending habits, reaping the rewards of good choices and suffering the consequences of bad ones.

I think it’s about time that someone start teaching young people about personal finance, and maybe doing it this way will work. My parents did not teach me much, and as soon as I got to college I started racking up credit card debt that took me years and years to pay off. Some of the topics the curriculum discusses includes:

* Savings & Compounding Interest: 401Ks and IRAs
* Understanding a Credit Score and its Implications
* Understanding Credit Cards and Managing Debt
* How a Bank Works
* Taxes
* Insurance
* Renting vs. Owning
* Managing Loans
* Investing Overview: An In Depth Review of Trading and How the Stock Exchange Works
* How the Federal Reserve Works
* Consumer Fraud and Protection

So kudos to EverFi and I hope they get the funding they need to take this program to more and more Generation Y students. I bet most of them could use any help they could get!

Share and Enjoy: