(Rhinelander) -The idea is to teach young people what it's like to balance a checkbook, pay for expenses and still be able to live life.
The School District of Rhinelander has gotten recognition for it's 'Mad Money' program, a day-long event where students are tasked to learn money-management exercises.
Partners in Education collaborates with the school district on the event. Spokesperson Lara Barbour..
"When we started this, we felt as a business, community and parent group that was sort of lacking. So what we wanted was to bring an experience to kids that's a fun way to bring a little more of the soft-side of money management. They're not going to learn about this in a textbook and hopefully through this activity they're going to get exposure to all of those things need to make it through life..."
One participant was sophomore Jason Zheng..
"Today I'm learning how to do life skills. They're teaching us how to write checks, how to do taxes and what not...."
Jason says he would like to work in accounting or related jobs.
Business Education teacher Patrick Kubeny says the program is led by California-based Next Generation Personal Finance. They gave Rhinelander a $10,000 grant to teach financial literacy, and as part of it Rhinelander was one of eight schools, nationally, featured in the documentary "The Best Class You Never Had".
In the documentary, Kubeny talks about teaching financial literacy...
"Students need to know that they need to be the one to focus on the planning for any financial need. A favorite comment of mine in classes is no one will ever care about your money than you will.."
About 180 sophomores attended the sessions that included booths from area businesses.