Last month, senior Anmol Mital presented at the Council for Economic Education’s 61st reiteration of their annual conference. As the current president of the Economics and Investment Club here at Maggie Walker, Mital is active in bringing speakers to the club, pioneering a stock market challenge, and teaching club members how to easily access stock research. Since his sophomore year, Mital has been passionate about the field of economics and finance, and more specifically, financial literacy.

When COVID-19 first hit, students were prohibited from attending school in person, which caused many of them to have extra time on their hands with wellness days, the elimination of extracurricular activities, and the subtracted cost of commuting. For Mital, the pandemic was at its peak his sophomore year, during which students were on a full-virtual or hybrid model. While looking for ways to spend his extra time, engage himself intellectually, and make an impact on his community, Mital thought of making a financial literacy game for students. The pandemic caused the whole world, the United States included, to plummet into uncharted financial territory. Many individuals lost their jobs and struggled to provide for themselves and their families. The Biden Administration, in response to this catastrophe, issued stimulus checks to single people making less than $75,000, heads of households making less than $112,500, and married couples filing jointly making less than $150,000. This socioeconomic population, due to their relatively low income, oftentimes struggled to manage their money and utilize the checks properly. In order to prevent this pattern from repeating in future generations, Mital decided to create something fun and engaging for kids to help them learn how to budget and save and make better financial decisions. He realized that “a lot of people don’t really know what to do with the stimulus checks and that money,” so he asked himself, “Why don’t I help people out?”

Based on some examples from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Mital initially built a PowerPoint-based game. He then took his prototype and went to classrooms in Richmond and Henrico County Public Schools to play his game with students. After testing it with younger students, he turned it into an online game that is accessible outside of school and published it on his website. On September 30, Mital presented his work to educators and experts of economics and finance at the CEE conference, explaining the need for financial literacy among young individuals. Using his extra downtime during the pandemic, Mital created something positive and impactful for the Richmond community and beyond. With leaders like Mital empowering the youth of today, the necessary monumental progress toward global financial literacy is being made.