Pre-covid the Menifee County Resource Center and the Menifee County Extension Office worked together to host a Reality Store for all 6-8^th grades in Menifee County Schools.  This entailed having 20 plus volunteers in the school for at least half a day.  Volunteers would sit a booth that represented a real-life family expense.  For example, a booth for a mortgage or for entertainment. 

When planning reality store for 2022 discussion about the positive and negatives of the event where discussed.  One being there were to many kids to get through the booths in a 50 min class.  As well as having enough volunteers for each booth.  The FCS/4-H agent and ANR/4-H agent suggested that we could do a virtual reality store in the classroom.  Each student would log into a Google Classroom and walk themselves through a virtual reality store.  Both agents teamed up to build the reality store classroom.

All 7^th and 8^th graders in Menifee County participated as well as the business class at the high school.  Many statements were heard from the students stating, “wow I can’t survive on this income” and “how many part-time jobs do I have to have to cover my expenses.”  After filling out the survey 78% will start creating a personal budget, 74% understands what it takes to run a household and 85% understands how to budget their money.  The teacher Ms. Wells and Ms. Clark stated that running Reality Store in the classroom was more beneficial to all involved.