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MIKE MOORE: Bills 101: The vision to spot money pits
BY MIKE MOORE
Journal Times
Even with a bare-bones $385-a-month apartment and an accounting job, Timothy Bykowski was having trouble making the numbers work. No, buying a car didn’t look possible for the father of two.
“I gotta get the bus pass,” he said with a sigh Tuesday morning.
Just a little while later, I witnessed him get a speeding citation. How’d he scrounge up the cash for a new vehicle? I’m not even sure he did.
See, the whole thing was a simulation set up to show Racine Unified high school students what it’s like to live on a budget. Called Reality Check Racine, Tuesday’s exercise erred on the softer side of reality.
The phantom traffic infraction cost Bykowski $10. He wrote a check, a process that comes as naturally to younger generations as defying gravity.
The checkbook full of images of firefighters wasn’t his, nor were the kids or the career. Not yet. Students were assigned a profile, often loosely based on their real career path.
“So this is going to come up pretty quick for me now,” he said.
Let the politicians trip over each other to see who can best dig consumers out from under their oversized homes, credit card payments and other monetary disasters. The best way to neutralize those traps is to teach kids to avoid them in the first place.
Sounds obvious, but it’s not happening enough. While only about a third of parents surveyed by Charles Schwab wished they had learned more math, 57 percent wished they had picked up more money management tips.
With a mom who has struggled with illness and a dad serving in Iraq, Horlick senior Brienna Elam hasn’t exactly been shielded from life’s knocks. But, as she gets ready to become the first of her siblings to go to college, the exercise gave her a new appreciation for what it’s like to be a parent.
I met her after she shelled out $80 to fill up her imaginary light truck. Probably happened lugging her five pretend kids to and from a four-bedroom house.
“I did pay a little too much for my house,” she said, slipping into character. “If anything should happen to me, my kids can have that house.”
There was plenty of second-guessing on career choices. Don’t be a dietitian, a student would say, summing up the day’s harsh lesson. Or a biologist.
Kari Schulte wasn’t feeling that way. When she handed over her $3,500 monthly child-support check to state Rep. Bob Turner, it barely made a dent in her salary. She and Patricia Houf, a fellow junior at Case, got assigned jobs as orthopedic surgeons. No acting job needed; they plan to open a practice together.
“Looks like you fell off a ladder,” a “nurse” told perfectly ambulatory students. Ahh, yes, got to plan for dumb old luck. Unless they had insurance, the “patients” were sent to the government table to pay up. Made me wonder if socialized medicine had been approved overnight.
Hot profession or not, a little ingenuity goes a long way. Horlick students Jon Weber and Nicholas Pacheco decided to cut costs by splitting a two-bedroom house. I sure hope their imaginary wives get along.
Mike Moore’s local news column runs each Friday. He can be reached at (262) 631-1724 or
mike.moore@lee.net
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