NAPERVILLE, IL (April 12, 2014) -- Students at Nichols Library learned just how complicated it is to make household budgetary choices when they participated in the recent Mad City Money program facilitated by Great Lakes Credit Union (GLCU). The event was one of many held during Money Smart Week®. The simulation helps our young adults learn what it is like to try to budget and manage a real life salary and real life situations. Students were given an occupation along with a salary, family, student loan debt, credit card debt, and cost of medical insurance to create a monthly budget as they visited various merchants and made decisions based on the management of their income.
“When young adults are provided with the ‘hands on’ tools and learn about resources available to them, they will be able to have and retain a positive relationship with money that will provide a healthy financial balance as they become adults,” said Vicki Schultz, GLCU’s AVP of Business Development, and the organizer of the program. Students not only made decisions on whether to buy a house or rent an apartment, choosing affordable day care and whether or not they could afford to go out to a restaurant for dinner, they also experienced one financial windfall and one financial setback.
Great Lakes Credit Union has served the Chicagoland area for over 75 years. Currently GLCU has assets of $645 million and serves over 56,000 members in Lake, McHenry, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Will and parts of Cook Counties in Illinois, plus Kenosha County Wisconsin. For more information on Great Lakes Credit Union and Mad City Money, please call 800.982.7850.
Money Smart Week® is a public awareness campaign designed to help consumers better manage their personal finances. This is achieved through the collaboration and coordinated effort of hundreds of organizations across the country including businesses, financial institutions, schools, libraries, not-for-profits, government agencies and the media.