Sitting in a computer lab in Oakland Mills Middle School, Dania Lopez is a 14-year-old eighth-grader. But when she logs into the new computer program being used by the school system to teach financial literacy, she's a single, 25-year-old credit analyst, working toward her master's degree and trying to stay on budget.

Money management has been taught in Howard County schools to varying degrees for more than 10 years, said Laurie Collins, Family and Consumer Science instructional facilitator with the school system.

But this is the first year that Junior Achievement of Central Maryland — a nonprofit that provides activities for students that focus on work readiness, financial literacy and entrepreneurship — has been involved.

Junior Achievement has been working with county middle schools since the beginning of the school year.

The program used in Family and Consumer Science has been integrated into that class curriculum, said Monica Stevens, the FACS teacher at Oakland Mills. For three weeks, students are given lessons on financial literacy — the difference between a savings and checking account, for example, or the difference between credit and debit cards — and then for about a week-and-a-half, they use what they have learned in a computer game.

"The most important thing is starting the conversation early, and getting the concepts down," said LaRee McCuan, JA's director of education and outreach. "It's about understanding just how much life in the real world costs."

The game, Finance Park, is a simulated experience in which students are given real-life scenarios and must budget accordingly.

Among 18 budgeting "pillars," they must prioritize their spending among transportation, housing, groceries, clothing, education and other necessities, as well as determining how much they want, or are able, to spend on things like entertainment.

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"At a very early point in their lives, they're learning between wants and needs, before they're going out and making those decisions for real," McCuan said.

Dania said the scenario assigned to her in Finance Park is one she actually wants for herself; she wants a Master's in Education, she said, in order to become a teacher.

"It would be a way of helping kids, to say 'You can go for it,'" Dania said. "It's your life, you can do what you want to do, if you set your mind to it. You can overcome obstacles. There's obstacles in front of you in the game, too, so you have to work to overcome them."

For Mikaila Westendorf, 13, of Columbia, the game's obstacles came in the way of somehow managing to buy work clothes for herself — a 31-year-old divorced receptionist — and clothes for her 10-year-old child.

"There's a lot of stuff to budget," said Mikaila, an eighth-grader. "It's so hard to be an adult ... but the game's telling you that everything costs something, so I'm sure this'll help when I'm older."

In the game, students must also pay taxes, which came as a surprise to some, Collins said.

"It was a genuine shock to them, the difference between what they make, and what they (actually) make," she said.

Others, to Stevens' equal surprise, actually enjoyed seeing the difference.

"Paying taxes, that's the fun part," she said. "They get into it."

Because students in Dania's and Mikaila's generation are so technology-savvy, sitting down to play a computer game in class makes learning more fun and accessible, Stevens said.

"This age is the best time to learn, because it's before — before they get credit cards, before they get jobs," she said "It's giving them a foundation of what's to come."