Windsor Star

Online game helps improve financial smarts

- ELLEN VAN WAGENINGEN evanwageni­ngen@windsorsta­r.com

Feeling stressed out and overwhelme­d by a debt, trying to save on a tight budget or figuring out where to invest the money you have been able to sock away?

The not-for-profit Investor Education Fund has come up with a game that won’t solve all your problems but might help you clear your head and get you on the right track.

It’s called The Cranial Cash Clash. (Quick, try saying it five times in a row as fast as you can.)

The idea is to open the door for consumers to become more financiall­y savvy.

“We have taken a key recommenda­tion of the federal government’s Task Force on Financial Literacy — a self-assessment tool — to heart and evolved it considerab­ly with the creation of this engaging interactiv­e game,” Investor Education Fund president Tom Hamza said when the game was released last week.

“Self-assessment is an important first step to education, and it won’t happen unless we reach people with something that captures their interest and makes financial literacy appealing and relevant.”

The game has players answer multiple choice questions in several categories and scores them based on the number of correct answers and how quickly they’re selected. There were three categories available when I went online to play last week: Debt Drama, Quest to Invest and Scam Exam. The categories on saving for school and shopping for investment­s weren’t available yet.

I got all the answers right in the three categories I played. As a bonus, with each answer I selected, I was given an explanatio­n of why it was correct. I wasn’t fast enough to earn a gold award, however, just a silver and two bronze trophies that popped up at the end of each game.

Also after each game, I was asked if I would like resources to learn about the topic. I plugged in my email address and was sent a list of links to web pages with more informatio­n. This is probably the most useful part of the game, which is available at the Investor Education Fund’s website, Getsmarter­aboutmoney.ca, and as a mobile app for Apple IOS and Android devices.

I’m not sure The Cranial Cash Clash has enough bells and whistles to keep hardcore gamers, which I am not, interested for more than a nanosecond. (If the Call of Duty folks came up with a personal finance warfare version, that would be awesome.)

Still, a game is a nice way to get folks who are intimidate­d or overwhelme­d to start sorting out their personal finances. I’ve been reading so many books and articles about money matters lately that the tsunami of informatio­n has me practicall­y paralyzed. So taking a few minutes to play an online game was a good way to put things back into perspectiv­e.

Watch for the Getsmarter­aboutMoney.ca folks and their game at the Feb. 18 Windsor Spitfires game at the WFCU Centre, as well as other OHL games in the province.

Even if you don’t like the game, check out Getsmarter­aboutmoney. ca. The website is a user-friendly starting point for finding informatio­n on day-to-day financial issues, from budgeting to buying a house to saving for retirement.

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