What Else Haven't We Counted?
An Unschool Pages Money, Math & Rhetoric Exercise to Encourage Financial Critical Thinking
Someone says: You get $5,000. Okay. Before we celebrate, spend it, reject it or argue about it, let's make the number work a little harder.
This is not a worksheet you need to finish.
It is a game, a few calculations and a collection of questions you can pull out over dinner, in the car or whenever the world hands your family an interesting claim.
You do not need to know the answers before you begin.
You need to know how to keep looking.
The question underneath everything is:
What else haven't we counted?
Play First
Game: Make Everything Cost Something
For one afternoon, one day or an entire week, create your own tiny family economy.
Use whatever you already have:
- Monopoly money
- Poker chips
- Index cards
- Scrap paper
- Points on a whiteboard
- Homemade money designed by the kids
Give everyone a starting amount of money or a daily salary.
Then start charging for things.
Maybe:
- Bathroom entry
- Meals
- Snacks
- Opening the refrigerator
- Toilet paper
- Soap
- Wi-Fi
- Water
- Entertainment
- Charging a device
Do not introduce everything at once.
Start small.
Let everybody get comfortable with the economy first.
Then change it.
Raise a few prices.
Add a new fee.
Increase everyone's income a little, but increase some prices by more.
Set Your Prices
You can make up your own economy, but here is an easy place to start:
| Item | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bathroom | $1 | $1 | $2 |
| Water | $1 | $2 | $3 |
| Snack | $2 | $3 | $4 |
| Wi-Fi | $3 | $4 | $6 |
| Meal | $5 | $6 | $8 |
| Device charging | $1 | $2 | $3 |
| Daily salary | $25 | $26 | $27 |
The exact prices do not matter.
The changing prices do.
You can raise prices slowly, suddenly or unevenly.
Maybe food gets more expensive while bathroom access stays the same.
Maybe Wi-Fi jumps overnight.
Maybe everybody gets a raise too.
Yesterday they earned: $25
Today they earn: $26
Tomorrow they earn: $27
Their income keeps going up.
But so do their expenses.
Are they actually getting richer?
Let them figure that out.
Make Your Own Economy
| Item | Starting Price | New Price | Newer Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| __________________ | $_____ | $_____ | $_____ |
| __________________ | $_____ | $_____ | $_____ |
| __________________ | $_____ | $_____ | $_____ |
| __________________ | $_____ | $_____ | $_____ |
| __________________ | $_____ | $_____ | $_____ |
| Daily salary | $_____ | $_____ | $_____ |
You can change the economy whenever things become too predictable.
Add a fee.
Raise a price.
Lower a price.
Increase salaries.
Freeze salaries.
Introduce something everyone suddenly wants.
Introduce something everyone needs.
Then watch.
Watch What Happens
Do they:
- Stop buying certain things?
- Ration something?
- Share resources?
- Pool their money?
- Negotiate with each other?
- Ask for a raise?
- Look for substitutes?
- Start charging each other for things?
- Lend money?
- Start a business?
- Protest your prices?
- Try to change the rules?
- Create an underground economy?
- Refuse to participate in your economy entirely?
Give them room to solve the problem.
Do not rush to explain the exercise.
Let the economy become irritating enough for them to notice what is happening.
That is the game.
Pick One Question
You do not need to turn this into a worksheet.
Ask one:
What changed your decisions?
What did you stop buying first?
Did earning more money mean you could afford more?
Or simply:
What happened?
Then let the conversation go wherever it goes.
You can stop there.
Seriously.
That is already a lesson.
Make It Harder: Add Debt
If your kids are ready for another layer, stop giving them all of their money upfront.
Make them borrow.
Suppose water costs: $5
But they do not have $5.
They borrow it.
Now add interest.
Keep the numbers easy.
They borrow: $5
You charge: $1 in interest
Now they owe: $6
They wait another round before paying.
Add another: $1
Now they owe: $7
Wait again.
Now: $8
Something that originally cost $5 is getting more expensive even though they have not received any more water.
That creates a new question: How can something that costs $5 end up costing $8?
Let them make payments.
If they owe $8 and pay $2, write down what happens.
If another interest charge arrives before they finish paying, add it.
They can physically watch the debt change.
Then change the rules again.
You might:
- Raise the price of water.
- Lower everyone's income.
- Introduce an unexpected expense.
- Let someone refinance.
- Let one child lend money to another.
- Let someone start a business.
- Add a tax.
- Add a fee.
- Offer a discount.
- Let someone negotiate their salary.
- Let someone refuse your currency and invent another one.
You do not need all of these.
Pick whatever makes the game interesting for your family.
Make $5,000 Disappear
Now everybody gets a hand written check for: $5,000
Sounds like a lot.
Let's find out.
Use real household expenses if your family is comfortable doing that, or invent a household.
Pay for things such as:
- Housing
- Groceries
- Electricity
- Internet
- Phone
- Transportation
- Insurance
- Household supplies
- Activities
Then introduce one problem.
Maybe:
- The refrigerator dies.
- The car needs a major repair.
- The roof leaks.
- Insurance denies a claim.
- Groceries increase.
- Someone loses two weeks of income.
- A favorite activity raises its price.
- A medical bill arrives.
Now spend the $5,000.
What gets paid first?
What can wait?
What gets cut?
How quickly does the money disappear?
What still needs to be paid after it is gone?
Let the kids decide.
Do not immediately correct their choices.
Ask them to explain their priorities.
Then switch roles.
Let somebody else control the household money.
See whether they make the same decisions.
Pick One Question
Is $5,000 a lot of money?
Or:
Does that depend on what the $5,000 has to do?
Or:
What disappeared from family life first when the money got tight?
That conversation is the exercise.
Now Make the Number Big
One person receiving $5,000 is one thing.
What happens when approximately 240 million adults receive it?
Try the math:
240,000,000 × $5,000 = __________________
Write the whole number.
Then say it out loud.
The answer is:
$1,200,000,000,000
or:
$1.2 trillion
Now compare these two statements:
You get $5,000.
and:
Approximately $1.2 trillion has to come from somewhere.
Both describe the same proposal.
One just gives us somewhere else to look.
Pick One Question
Where would $1.2 trillion come from?
Does the government already have it?
If it has to be borrowed, is $1.2 trillion still the whole cost?
You do not need to answer all three.
Pick one.
For Older Kids: Follow the Money
This is where the rabbit hole gets deeper.
Start at:
I received $5,000.
Now travel backward.
Where might that money have come from?
- Taxes?
- Tariffs?
- Existing government revenue?
- Borrowing?
- Cuts somewhere else?
- New money creation?
- A mixture?
If the money is borrowed, the original amount is not necessarily the final cost.
Suppose, only for the exercise, that $1.2 trillion were borrowed at 7%.
The federal government does not borrow at this rate. We are using a simple whole-number percentage to see what interest does to a very large number.
Try the math:
$1,200,000,000,000 × 7 ÷ 100 = __________________
That is:
$84,000,000,000
or:
$84 billion
in one hypothetical year of interest.
The same principle shows up in ordinary life.
A house has a purchase price.
Then there may be:
- Interest
- Property taxes
- Insurance
- Repairs
- Maintenance
A car has a purchase price.
Then there may be:
- Interest
- Insurance
- Registration
- Fuel
- Repairs
- Tires
The price and the total cost are not always the same number.
Pick One Question
Who ultimately pays the interest?
When does borrowed money stop costing money?
Is the amount borrowed the same thing as the amount repaid?
Follow the Money Forward
Now move the other direction.
Millions of people receive additional money.
What happens when they spend it?
What do they buy?
Can businesses immediately produce more of those things?
What happens if demand changes faster than supply?
Could prices change?
Maybe.
But do not stop at:
Inflation did it.
Prices can be affected by many things:
- Consumer demand
- Energy prices
- Housing shortages
- Transportation costs
- Supply problems
- Wages
- Interest rates
- Tariffs
- Government policy
- Natural disasters
- War
- Business pricing
- Several things happening at once
Economies are systems.
Systems usually have more than one moving part.
Pick One Question
What happens after millions of people spend the money?
Who ultimately supplied the resources represented by that money?
What else might change at the same time?
Put the Words on Trial
Numbers are not the only things worth interrogating.
Words do work too.
The proposed $5,000 payment was called a:
DIVIDEND
What does the word dividend make you imagine?
Now swap the word.
- Payment
- Benefit
- Refund
- Relief
- Stimulus
- Reward
- Incentive
- Government spending
- Borrowed money
The underlying dollars may be identical.
But does each phrase make the proposal feel identical?
That is worth noticing.
For older kids, choose one word and put it on trial.
Maybe:
- Dividend
- Free
- Savings
- Investment
- Reform
- Incentive
- Bribe
- Lobbying
- Pandering
Do not define every word.
Pick one.
Look at several definitions.
Look at how the word is being used.
Then ask:
What does this word encourage me to notice?
What might it encourage me not to notice?
Who benefits from describing it this way?
The Really Mad Questions
This part is optional.
It is for the kid who is still arguing with you three hours later.
Suppose a politician says:
Vote for me and I will give you $5,000.
Now suppose the statement is:
If my party wins, you will receive $5,000.
Are those statements the same?
You could investigate that:
- Legally
- Ethically
- Politically
- Economically
But do not turn it into twenty questions.
Choose one thread.
Maybe:
Why announce the money before an election instead of afterward?
Or:
What response is the promise intended to produce?
Or:
When does an incentive become manipulation?
Or:
Does needing the money change how freely someone can respond to an offer?
One of those can fill an entire meal or car ride.
Let it.
Bonus Math for the Kid Who Wants More
Want to make the trillion-dollar number ridiculous?
Pretend all $1.2 trillion had to become physical $20 bills.
How many bills would be needed?
$1,200,000,000,000 ÷ $20 = __________________
The answer is:
60,000,000,000 bills
Now suppose manufacturing 1,000 bills costs $73.
How many groups of 1,000 bills are there?
60,000,000,000 ÷ 1,000 = __________________
Then:
60,000,000 × $73 = __________________
Now imagine 240 million checks had to be mailed.
Instead of working in dollars and decimals, work in cents.
Postage:
82 cents
Number of checks:
240,000,000
Try:
240,000,000 × 82 = __________________ cents
Then divide by 100 to convert the answer into dollars.
These are thought experiments.
They are not estimates of the actual cost of such a program.
We are deliberately playing with different costs so we can practice asking:
What else haven't we counted?
Take the Question With You
The $5,000 proposal is only today's example.
The question works almost anywhere.
Someone offers you a car loan.
What else haven't we counted?
A mortgage.
What else haven't we counted?
A raise.
What else haven't we counted?
A credit card.
A subscription.
A discount.
An investment.
A tax benefit.
A government program.
A "free" trial.
A really big number with a whole lot of zeros.
The goal is not to teach our kids which conclusion to reach.
The goal is to make sure they know how to keep looking after someone else would prefer they stop.
One Last Question
Did receiving more dollars automatically make you wealthier?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
What else would you need to know before answering?
Unschool Pages does not exist to tell children what to think. These exercises are invitations to investigate the systems they already live inside.
Paid subscribers received this exercise as a dividend for supporting Unschool Pages.
See what I did there?