By Next Avenue

Filed under: Cost of Living, Savings Challenges

By BARBARA BEDWAY

During an ice storm last month that kept U.S. Rep. David Price grounded at his home in his Durham, N.C., the 72-year-old Democratic legislator took 10 minutes out of his day to play Spent, an online game created by an unusual partnership in his district.

The game isn’t about angry birds, but impoverished Americans – and the economic realities they face.

Game About Tough Realities of the Poor

The challenge: You’re a single parent who has lost your house and job and you’ve got $1,000 to your name. Can you choose well enough among your limited options for housing, transportation, food and medical care to make it to the end of the month?

Spent requires you to deal with the wrenching choices Americans in poverty routinely encounter, from juggling expenses to figuring out whether you can afford to help an elderly parent buy life-saving medication.

In one scenario, you have two bills to pay, but only enough money for one. Do you ignore the other bill or swallow your pride and post a request to borrow money from friends on Facebook?

Millions Have Played

Since it went online in 2011, more than 2 million people have played Spent, a joint project of McKinney ad agency and Urban Ministries of Durham, which runs a homeless shelter that has housed more than 1,300 people in the past year. Schools and colleges also use the game in their curriculum and it has been integrated into some textbooks.

Spent is also featured in Pound Foolish, a new book by Helaine Olen about the failings of the personal finance industry to take into account the growing economic pressures on Americans in the last three decades.

Patrice Nelson, executive director of Urban Ministries, says the game was designed “to educate people to the fact that one missed paycheck, a car accident, a lack of health insurance, unemployment or having to take a job below your previous pay level can end up creating a scenario that you would never have imagined.”

One Congressman’s Experience

How did Representative Price do? Epic fail.

“I ran out of money in nine days,” he says. His main budget buster: paying for health care. “Having a car accident didn’t help,” Price adds.

And, he noted, if the game had assumed the person was over 50, the results would have been even worse. “The cost of health care would have been astronomical,” he says. “It would be a nonstarter.”

Fiscal Cliffs, Over-50 Edition

Though Congress may have addressed its fiscal cliff, millions of poor Americans, especially older Americans, face their own fiscal cliffs …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance