OHS seniors get a ‘Real Life’ at financial seminar

In one of their last acts as high school students, OHS seniors spent a morning at The Refuge learning about “Real Life” budgeting from local community leaders and a Texas A&M AgriLife economist, who emphasized the importance of financial literacy and making wise financial decisions. The students spent about an hour roaming tables at The Refuge gymnasium, seeking to balance budgets for apartments, transportation, entertainment, and other expenses, including unplanned children and accidents as part of the “It’s Your Money! Real World Financial Simulation for Young Adults.” The event for graduating seniors is sponsored each year by Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Office and Interbank..

Interbank Senior Vice President Jerry Campbell said the 10-year-old program was revamped this year to allow the seniors to choose their own professions. Salaries and prices were updated to reflect current market conditions. “The program [is] making you think through something that some of the kids haven’t thought of at this point,” he said. “Mom and Dad just took care of everything. And we are seeing from previous times … when we come back and we see kids … [at] our local bank and [they say] I went home and Mom and Dad and I had a conversation about this. And sometimes you hear that the kids are going home explaining something to tie line from the wind project substation to the facility’s substation and to tie into the City of Graham’s wastewater treatment facility. The site is already cleared and early works are set to commence in June, Mr. Moore said.

PlugPower representatives also attended a job fair in Graham, looking for workers for the 50 full-time positions it expects to create, in addition to the temporary construction jobs, Mr. Moore said. Full-time jobs include truck drivers, plant managers, operations technicians, maintenance staff, dispatchers, and environmental health and safety personnel.

Once the hydrogen plant is operational, the company expects to use hydrogen fuel cell-powered trucks to transport the hydrogen, Mr. Moore said.

Mom and Dad, educating them on something they didn’t know.”

Seniors Dean Johnson and Joshua Prentice found the exercise “boring” and said they had covered much of the material during the school year. Mr. Johnson plans to go into business for himself, and Mr. Prentice plans to take a structural welding course after graduation. But senior Steven Tucker Heard said the class “could be very useful for some people.”

“Some people don’t know how to take care of their credit card debts or even how to budget their groceries properly,” Mr. Heard said.