Regular People

Remember that Cosby episode where he teaches Theo a wonderful lesson about money using what I'm pretty sure was Monopoly money? Basically proving that as do-able as the "regular person" life appears to teenagers, things cost more than you think they do.

I used an amalgam of this example in my Sunday School class today, as the lesson topic was self-reliance. I love lessons that veer away from the spiritual. Nothing against the spiritual, but the more practical topics get such little airtime and I think they are more valuable than we give them credit for. So I gave each of the kids (ages 14-18) a career, a salary, a dollar amount of student loan debt, a few set bills that were not negotiable (i.e. taxes, utilities, etc), and then let them determine how much they wanted to spend on everything else, giving them a range of options for each category of bill. It was seriously one of the most enjoyable and entertaining lessons I've ever taught. (Best line of the day: "If I get rid of the Ferrari, I can have food." Oh, to be 14 again.)

After the kids worked out their budgets, I gave each of them a substantial unplanned expense and had them re-balance to accommodate it. I know the whole thing was made up, but it was nice to see them clicking away at calculators and reshuffling things around. And on some minor level, I hope they learned something. If nothing else, that we usually cannot afford to have everything we might wish for. Here's to prioritizing. Here's to perhaps not driving a Ferrari.
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