A credit card game for credit classes

The Good Credit Game is more than a credit card game. It's a credit curriculum kit. It allows a financial educator to teach credit classes. The package includes a credit card game that also teaches about credit reports and credit scores. There are also a number of other hands-on credit games and activities.

Why teach with a credit card game?

Often credit classes are taught with PowerPoint and worksheets. However, a hands-on credit card game makes credit classes fun. Our credit card game also makes classes engaging. It's far easier to teach a class where participants are actually participating. With The Good Credit Game, a series of 5 credit activities builds up to the credit board game. The activities are designed with a lot of thought – in terms of how to make people feel comfortable in the class and to help them learn about credit.

What comes before a credit card game?

The board game teaches about a number of aspects of credit more than being just a credit card game. It can be a standalone activity or it can be used with the larger credit curriculum package. It builds on other activities that teach:

• What is credit? How is lending money to a friend like or not like the process a bank uses to let you borrow money or use credit?

• Where does a financial lender get the information it uses to decide it should let you use its money?

• What's a credit report? What's a credit score? How are a credit report and credit score related?

• Why does a credit score matter? What does bad credit cost you?

The credit card game reinforces these topics and also includes a variety of myths, facts and best practices about credit cards.

What's covered by the credit card game?

The credit card game covers credit cards in the larger context of how they affect your credit. The board game has 39 credit topics, which you can customize to your class. To this end, it addresses how credit cards affect having good or bad credit, how having good credit will help you get a card, how credit and debit cards are different (and how debit cards don't affect a credit score), the importance of paying your bill on time (and how that affects credit), why it matters if you've had your credit cards for a long time, how much of your available credit you should use, getting and correcting credit reports, the 3 Cs of credit, repairing credit, balance transfers and unauthorized charges.

What's not covered by the credit card game?

The Good Credit Game isn't meant to be a complete standalone lesson on credit cards. It's designed to teach about credit, including credit cards. It doesn't cover deciding which card is best for you, how to apply for a credit card, how to handle a lost card.

You can see how it aligns to national financial education standards for teaching credit.