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Hamilton High School Students Learn the Value of Money and Life

Financial "March Madness" program yields valuable lessons in student money management.

When you think “March Madness,” you probably think NCAA college basketball. But the term now means something entirely different to about 260 students at .

Instead of “NCAA Champions,” how about inserting “Lifetime Success” as the ultimate goal?

Throughout March, business education teachers Toni Hillmann, Brenda Savic and Skip Hay exposed their students to some serious, real world lessons on how to be responsible with the use of money. The teachers teamed up with Make A Difference Wisconsin, a non-profit organization that has business and community volunteers who have worked in the area of finance. The volunteers gave a series of 45-minute classroom presentations on a host of financial topics.

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“All three of us business teachers had a business person come into our classes six times during March, about twice a week,” said Hillmann. “They talked about budgeting and saving, credit reports, online banking, how to set up checking accounts, and even how to write a check.”

On March 24, the students -freshmen to seniors - participated in a financial simulation called “Reality Check” at the Silver Spring Country Club. Volunteers manned stations labeled auto dealership, home buying, day care, groceries, medical and other life expenses. Each student was given their circumstances such as career, whether they were married or single, if they had student loans or if they smoked. They then had to make practical decisions on how to spend their money.

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“They had to sit down with tax representatives and they couldn’t believe how much money was taken right off the top,” said Hillman. “For some of those kids, it was a real eye-opener to see what it takes to live per month. If they were assigned to be a smoker, when they’d go into a gas station they had to add an extra $75 to the check they had to write to cover their cigarettes for the month.  They were just appalled by that.”

After it was over, Hillman said one girl was asked what she learned at the event and she replied, “Well, I learned I’m never going to be single with two kids in day care.”

“Financial literacy is part of our strategic plan,” district spokesperson Denise Dorn Lindberg said. “The Reality Check and the Make A Difference Wisconsin presentations are part of a bigger picture of opportunities available to students.”

The lessons these students learned have already started paying dividends.  Students in Savic’s personal finance course recently competed in the National Financial Literacy Challenge through the U.S. Treasury Department. There were 84,372 students across the country who took the challenge on basic personal finance concepts and had an average score of 69 percent.

The average score for Savic’s students was 83 percent with 11 of her students ranking in the top 20 percentile. Emily Nettesheim received a perfect score, one of only 563 students nationally to do so. Wisconsin was fifth in the ranking of highest participation as well as third for the number of perfect scores.

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