Financial Illiteracy, with its kissing-cousin Financial Irresponsibility, is a plague upon our nation. Witness the skyrocketing national debt, encumbering present and future generations with mandatory interest payments while also pillaging from the working poor and middle class by the covert methods of inflation. Observe the confusion at congregational voters meetings as the church budget is adopted. Contemplate the embarrassing load of consumer debt that weighs down the typical household.
How did we get into this mess?
How can we ever get out?
Fortunately, all the Average Joe Americans among us easily can do something to help. The Accounting Game, by Darrel Mullis and Judith Orloff, introduces in a very basic way the profound and powerful analytical tools deployed by expert accountants. The mysteries of double-entry bookkeeping are demystified in a manner appropriate for high school students, or even for the precocious students of the upper-elementary level.
With The Accounting Game, adults are left without excuse. If you can’t distinguish an asset from a liability, if you don’t understand what determines profit or loss, if you think that debt provides a sustainable means for lubricating current cash flow, then you will benefit from this book’s whimsical lessons based on the childhood ambition of running a lemonade stand.
By the end of the book, you’ll abandon the lemonade sales business in favor of a consulting business specializing in coaching others how best to manage the financial operations of their lemonade stands. And that means you’ll at last be qualified to sit (productively!) on your church council’s finance committee or to become a truly helpful member on the board of directors for your favorite nonprofit organization. You’ll also be a more responsible head of household and a better parent (why not read this book together with your older children as a summer project?).
I find this book so helpful that I’d even suggest you buy two copies—sending the second one to your congressional representative, before it’s too late.
Curious about the contents? Here’s a sneak preview of p. 62. Keep in mind that the preceding sections built up the reader’s knowledge base one small step at a time, offering practice exercises with an answer key in the back.
Dr. Ryan MacPherson holds a PhD in history and philosophy of science from the University of Notre Dame. After serving for twenty years as a professor at Bethany Lutheran College, he served as the founding academic dean of Luther Classical College for three years. He is author of Rediscovering the American Republic, a two-volume anthology of primary sources in American history, as well as several other books on topics ranging from theology to politics to bioethics. Dr. MacPherson has testified in court in defense of a homeschool father and for the protection of traditional American civics curricula, contributed to legal briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of marriage and the rule of law, appeared regularly on a variety of radio shows, and taught seminars for pastors and educators in Canada, Denmark, and Ecuador. The MacPherson homeschool family offers online enrichment courses through Lifelong Lyceum.
