Fun New Government Website Teaches Kids To Navigate Financial Hellscape They've Inherited
What timing! A flack reports: "the Ad Council just launched a ‘Financial Campaign' for the Department of Treasury, to educate the youngin's about debt management, credit history, credit cards, and the like." It is called ControlYourCredit.gov, and it seems to be inspired, appropriately, by Psycho and Barton Fink, two hellish tales of psychotic breaks with reality that take place in hotels, like this website, and our economy. Cute! You are supposed to somehow play this game in the lobby of this creepy hotel in order to make it to "Room 850," because ha ha, even though you now have perfect credit you still cannot afford a house, stupid millennial. Here is why this is sad:
In light of the recent stock market crunch and economic downturn, the Ad Council is launching stylized campaign at ControlYourCredit.gov that focuses on financial literacy for the Millennial generation. Statistically, the millennial generation is poised to accumulate mammoth proportions of debt. According to a study conducted by Sallie Mae, more than 50 percent of college students accumulate more than $5,000 in credit card debt while in school. Additionally, Capital One reported that only 10 percent of high schools in America teach financial management and 75 percent of graduating seniors do not understand basic investment principles.
All of those things indicate, basically, that we are doomed, utterly fucked, by the olds. And the federal government will save us by spending god knows how much publicizing a stupid internet game about figuring out your credit score. (And also spending quite a bit on making sure the FDIC has enough money to bail out all the banks that we owe our college loan money to! Or something like that. Honestly, we don't understand anything about finance. If only there were a flash game of some kind....). CORRECTION: The work was done pro bono (lol internet, right?) so no one spent anything on educating us about our massive debt.