Learning By Teaching

Steven Sass (), Francis Vitagliano () and Luke Delorme ()
Additional contact information
Steven Sass: Center for Retirement Research
Francis Vitagliano: Center for Retirement Research
Luke Delorme: Center for Retirement Research
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Steven A. Sass () and Steven A. Sass ()

Issues in Brief from Center for Retirement Research

Abstract: A wise old colleague once quipped that the teacher is the only one who ever learns anything in a classroom. We hope this isn’t so with the retirement-education game we recently developed. That is, we hope those who play the game actually learn something. But the punch line of the quip certainly turned out to be true. We were surprised to find how much we learned about the retirement planning process in putting the game together. The game — Get Rich Slow — is not a financial planning tool. It’s an educational program designed for married women, who have unique retirement income problems. Such women generally live longer than their husbands, have smaller Social Security and employer pension benefits, and are rarely comfortable making financial decisions. Our objective is to give women an overview of the retirement planning process and the challenges they face, and the confidence and motivation needed to become actively engaged in retirement planning. Get Rich Slow is designed to be played in a group setting with an experienced moderator, which reduces defensiveness and opens participants to new ideas and perspectives. In the game, the group meets a fictional couple — Sally and her husband Norm — when Sally is 45. They meet them again at 55, at retirement (either 62 or 64), 75, and 85. The group makes decisions for Sally and Norm at the first four ages and experiences the implications of its decisions — and chance events like stock market booms and busts, job loss, and health shocks — at the subsequent age. The primary chance event is a spin of “the wheel of fortune,” which results in Sally and Norm experiencing the investment outcomes of one of seven historical decades, from the 1930s to the 1990s.

Keywords: get rich slow; retirement savings; pensions; 401(k) plans (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
Date: 2006-06-12

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Working Paper: Learning by Teaching (2006)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crr:issbrf:ib47

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