The Chipman at work (play?)

Lately I’ve been feeling very self-absorbed with all the time I’ve been spending with moving, finding a house, and then moving into said house. And David has been in Korea almost two weeks now so that is starting to get to me. Sooo, the timing of this birthday wish was so perfect. No better way to stop thinking about yourself than a little good ol’ fashioned service, right?! Thank you, mom, for using your special occasion to make all of us better people.

I spent a lot of time searching for what exactly I wanted to do – LA has plenty of opportunities, but I wanted it to be meaningful. This is what I finally found:

JA Finance Park

Finance Park teaches junior high/high school kids to be financially literate. This is a cause I feel very strongly about, so this was a perfect find for me. They have “adult for a day” events, where these kids each get a different real-life scenario (marital status, career, number of children, salary, etc) and they are to spend the day choosing housing and transportation, figuring out which insurance plans to get, paying bills, donating to charities, and figuring out how to budget their money all the while. The program director actually said, “It’s like the Disneyland of financial literacy!” Are you geeking out about this place? I was.

Today I mentored three ladies from the local YWCA at Finance Park as they learned the ins and outs of personal finance. Sadly, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of any of them because they were all minors. There was a photographer wandering around documenting the whole time and I begged him to send me some pics. We’ll see if it happens.

I got to walk Iana, Tai, and Esther through the process, and I talked to them about the importance of saving, paying down credit card debt, understanding what bills you have control over and what you don't...you know, adult-type stuff.

Iana, a senior, was very competitive about the event. She flew through everything and was the first one done out of the entire group with each task. I think I had to help her twice. She says she wants to go to Stanford, and you know what? I think she’ll get in with a scholarship.

Since Iana was so self-sufficient, I spent most of my time with the other two. Esther is in 8th grade. She has a quiet determination about her. She was the only one in the group who definitely does not like math, but she held her own beautifully and didn’t let Iana’s speediness get her down. Slow and steady, that’s her way.

Tai is in 7th grade and she already knows exactly where she’s going to college and what she’s going to do to get a scholarship. Of the three, she was the most in touch with financial reality. She fully embraced the activity and took each section seriously, as if she were making real decisions about what would work for her, her pretend-spouse, and their two pretend-kids. She’s a saver, and she’s selfless about what she does spend: when she did the section on buying clothes for her family and realized that she’d be spending more on clothes for herself than anyone else, she changed her selection.

Sometimes it was frustrating for them. It was hard to understand why you have to subtract so much at the very start for taxes. When things didn’t balance out and they realized they’d have to make cuts, it was hard for them to cut out some entertainment, or get a car that wasn’t as nice, or make adjustments to the groceries or insurance so they could afford it. They had spent a lot of time thinking about each decision, and going back to change things was difficult. You could see the clarity coming to them as they realized that this is what life in the real world is like, and yet you have to make it work anyway. That was the point of the event - we were giving them tools to make it work, regardless of their situation.

This was quite a fulfilling day for me. I think I’ll probably go back again for more.

(Here's my one sneaky shot of some of the girls who attended.)

Happy birthday, Mom! I love you!