Earn What You Spend

My friend Thomas Davidson launched an amazing company this past year: EverFi.  The folks over at EverFi understand the drastic need for financial literacy, and are using an innovative approach (gaming) to teach these basic precepts.  An article today in CNN Money details their launch and some of what they are up to:

EverFi offers a five-hour series of Web tutorials that let students explore real-world settings, from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to a used-car dealership, while absorbing lessons about saving money, earning interest and managing debt. As students acquire new skills, the software encourages them to play a SimCity-style game in which they control characters’ spending habits, reaping the rewards of good choices and suffering the consequences of bad ones.

People like myself (and readers of other finance blogs) are able to get this learning from reading.  But, as Tom notes, a lot of this information can be quite boring (I’m the first to admit this) - so a different approach is needed if this is going to be effectively taught in schools.  If we can get our youth engaged in a conversation about earning what they spend, we can potentially avoid a whole host of problems (overleverage, anyone?) down the road.  

Keep up the good work, Tom, Jon & Ray!