Spokane Teachers Credit Union (STCU) held a simulation called My Life, My Money at Lakeland High School (LHS) for the senior class on Thursday May 6, 2021. 

The simulation was to give the seniors real life scenarios involving money that they may come across in their future lives. 

They gave them a budget, income and expenses and had them go through different scenarios that adults have to pay for with a month’s worth of income to see how they would solve the problem or how they use the money in a real life situation. 

Some had spouses that made a lot of money to contribute to the total income, while others were a single parent with a low income and a child that cost them over 600 dollars per month.

Trent Derrick, Principle at LHS states, “It’s a simulation to prepare them for real life problems they may find themselves in life.”

The simulation is to prepare students for financial situations that may come along eventually in their future lives. 

It consisted of a training, simulation, and a debriefing session of what happened and how they reacted to the situation. 

The presenter explained the directions in the beginning, and then released the students to go through the simulation. After everyone finished with the rotations, they went through a lesson on different topics like credit, retirement and loans with a different question per topic for the students to answer while in their groups. 

The group who answered the most questions correctly won a candy bar each.

At the end of the lesson, they had a raffle for 10 ten dollar Starbucks gift cards, two 25 dollar Amazon gift cards, and one 50 dollar Amazon gift card. 

Each student had the opportunity to win these prizes as long as they participated in the simulation and had their blue raffle ticket that they were given as they walked through the door. Ashley Smith won the 50 dollar Amazon gift card.

“The simulation was actually really helpful and was fun to do. Having to budget the money for a child, insurance, debt, entertainment, food and other factors was surprisingly difficult, and many of the students went into the negative numbers,” said Zoey Roman, a senior at LHS.

“It was a fun and helpful experience that the underclassman should look forward to experiencing.”