Exhibit in Las Vegas gives kids ‘new appreciation for parents’
By luck of the draw, 14-year-old Lourdes Valdez got a glimpse of what her life could be like at 32 if she were to be a married high school graduate with a 7-year-old child and a job as a call center representative earning $35,000 a year.
It sounded nice, Valdez said, until she had to take that salary and stretch it out to meet her monthly budget.
“You have to pay a lot, especially with child care. Some people pay like $1,000 a month,” said Valdez, an eighth-grader at J.D. Smith Middle School in North Las Vegas.
Valdez and her classmates got a real-life look at budgeting Friday at the Capital One/Junior Achievement Finance Park, set up in the Las Vegas Library on Las Vegas Boulevard, an exhibit intended to help kids project and plan for their futures.
“It gets them thinking; it starts the conversation,” said Caitlin Shea, the Junior Achievement director of development. “We’re taking away all the mystery.”
This marks the fifth year of the Finance Park exhibit. More than 4,500 kids will visit the park between now and mid-March, when it closes for the year. But the Finance Park is just one way the Junior Achievement nonprofit works with students in Clark County. The Southern Nevada chapter has been around for 21 years; the larger organization is 98 years old, Shea said.
The organization centers on workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, a category that includes the Finance Park. Students who have gone through Junior Achievement’s in-class curriculum finish the program by visiting the park, where they randomly draw a life scenario and figure out a monthly budget.
“A lot of the kids develop a new appreciation for their parents,” Shea said.
In his scenario, Eduardo Sanchez was a single dad making $37,000 a month working as an executive secretary.
“I learned what everything costs monthly. It all just added up,” he said.
One of the most surprising aspects for Sanchez was how much insurance cost. Sanchez and the other Smith students who planned their budgets had to figure out expenses in a number of categories including rent, utilities, insurance, transportation, gas, child care, groceries, clothing and entertainment.
The 14-year-old Sanchez wasn’t aware of many of the costs. He said the experience will help him as he goes through high school and plans his future.
“It shows what bar we need to hit,” he said, adding that he hopes he can secure a job that pays more and that he doesn’t want to be a single father.
For Valdez, Friday served as a reminder of the importance of saving. She wants to start putting money away now so she’s better situated in the future. She also wants to make sure she pursues higher education, instead of stopping after high school.
“Some of the other students had a bachelor’s degree. … They made a lot more,” she said.
^ Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misspelled Capital One and misidentified J.D. Smith Middle School.
Contact Meghin Delaney at 702-383-0281 or mdelaney@reviewjournal.com. Follow @MeghinDelaney on Twitter.
How to get involved
Junior Achievement is always looking for more volunteers, either to help run events like Finance Park, or to speak to students in class about careers.
During the week, the Finance Park is restricted to students in Clark County schools undergoing the program, but select Saturdays, the program is open to the community at large.
For more information, visit http://jalasvegas.org/
