Timber Creek High School senior Andrew Rogers has been given a $20,000 scholarship through the H&R Block Budget Challenge.
Rogers had placed 6th out of 31,000 entries through the Spring 2015 session.
“They always would keep the scores posted on the website, since I had seen my rank I was hopeful that I would win and then they announced the winners early June. It felt good to win, I owed it a lot to my Dad. I don’t do these competitions a lot, it was the first time I actually won $20,000, so it felt really good to win,” said Rogers.
H&R Block Budget Challenge is open to all high school and home school teachers and students. This program gives kids the confidence to try and balance a financial future. They offer $3 million in classroom grants and scholarships. There are 60 opportunities for classroom grants up to $5,000, 132 opportunities for student scholarships for $20,000 and a grand prize scholarship of $100,000.
“I was against 50,000 students nationwide, including my classmates in Mrs. Garcia’s money matters class,” said Rogers, “We had to participate in a simulation that would be similar to how we would handle money in real life, we were given things like bank accounts, credit cards and have to make car payments or pay rent. The point of the simulation was to develop us in real life budgeting, so they can see how we would combat our bills with out going bankrupt.”
Rogers is still undecided on for which college he plans to use his money for, although he said he “hopes to do something involving financing or business” after college.
Talon reporters Madison Butler and Caroline Oliphint contributed to this story.