In 2024, the poverty rate for Bullitt County was 10.6%, and although this poverty rate is lower than the national average for poverty (12.5%), the community wants our youth to be prepared with financial skills to fight poverty. According to the 2023 Community Assessment for Bullitt County, 12.6% of stakeholders wanted to see increases in youth career readiness and in youth life skills training, which included money management and life decision making.

Bullitt County 4-H partnered with the Family Resource Youth Services Coordinator for Mount Washington Middle School and Eastside Middle School to host the Reality Store Program for current 8^th grade students using the Reality Store Curriculum created by the University of Kentucky. Reality Store is an experiential learning opportunity for students to get a small dose of how much the “real” world costs. During this program, students must budget and manage their money based on their chosen careers. Students are asked to provide for a randomly chosen number of children and pay for common bills that adults see in a month. There is also a “luck of the draw” booth where the students can see how unexpected costs can affect their monthly budgets. For both schools, students chose their careers based on their current GPAs. We utilized the Bullitt East High School Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) to operate the booths as the students rotated throughout.

During this program, we had approximately 350 students, 45 FBLA volunteers, and the school administrative team and teachers who were participating or helping with Reality Store.

After this program, we wanted to see an increase in knowledge over budgeting, have participants understand the link between career choices and how much money you make will influence the lifestyle you can have, how much it costs to maintain a household and provide for children, and why saving money in important. We hope to see participants practice responsible financial decision making and develop habits that will contribute to employment in the future.

Students were asked to rate their level of understanding before and after the program for the following:

- How to properly budget: An increase in understanding of 91.8%

- How career choice will impact lifestyle: An increase in understanding of 91.8%

- How to maintain a household: An increase in understanding of 83.9%.

When asked specifically something that they learned from this program, responses given by students were:

“Something I learned from the program is that you need to check and be responsible for your own stuff, because while I was buying things they messed up my calculations and it showed I was in debt when I still had 2 thousand dollars left over. Also, money goes away faster than I realized.”

“I learned that it is very important to spend money on all the important things first like a home and car, and buy things like entertainment last.”

“How to manage life expenses in the future. Also that you need to plan ahead and budget.”