800 and You're The Mack

The Get Cheddar Club will meet six times between Friday, September 13th and early December. So there's only six times to impart the most important lessons about money that I can think of to a bunch of six to nine year olds.

I've decided to kick the Get Cheddar Club off with a song and dance about credit scores before moving into budgets. How do you teach six to nine year olds about credit scores? By drawing a parallel to grades in school. Assigning scores to grades does a couple things. It speaks the kids' school language and it lets them know what the range in scores are. Do you know what the range in scores are? I didn't as a kid or as a college student. Knowing what the range is gives the kids a starting point.

Learning the range of credit scores is one thing. Learning why they are important is another. School analogies help here too. If a student gets As, can we say there is little risk that the student will get all Fs? If a student gets all Fs, can we say there is a big risk that the student will not pass? Along the same lines, if I borrow $1 from a student and don't pay the student back, is there a big risk that I won't pay back other lenders? If a student borrows $1 from another student and pays it back the next day, is there little risk that in trusting that borrower again?

While I'd like to provide a detailed, cradle to the grave accounting of their lives, I need to keep their focus. I also don't want to overwhelm them right off the bat. So I'll ask two questions: Where do they want to go to college (the local state university or a noted private college) and where do they want to live (in their hometowns or a big city)? These are two big financial decisions that can impact the rest of their lives.

These goal are more attainable if they have good credit scores. Tuition and homeownership will cost less if they have good credit. The credit score song and dance combo will focus on:

1) Getting good credit by paying bills on time

2) Getting bad credit by paying bills late

3) Good credit keeps life less expensive

4) Bad credit makes life more expensive

In the first class I'll give each student a handful of brightly colored pieces of construction paper. They'll have to hand them in when class reconvenes in two weeks. If they do, their class credit score will improve. If they don't, it will get worse. I'll keep the scores up for all to see. Nothing like public shaming. As their credit scores change over the course of the class so will the price of their life on the big board.

The fun will come from how the kids understand these ideas and how they express themselves. It could be something such as, "600 lands a shack, 800 and you're the Mack." Using the language of grades will serve as a basic way for the kids to understand the terms, but at this age they're probably more worried about being cool and having fun than they are about their GPAs.


I'm curious what questions they'll ask and what lyrics and dance movies they'll come up with.