budget game for high school students
financial literacy
budget
personal budgeting game screen shot

Personal
Budgeting
Game

An engaging learning experience
that teaches financial literacy skills with real-life scenarios and consequences. Students play twelve virtual months to sharpen their skills.

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Personal Budget Game Features

students build a budget

Students Build a Budget to Manage Income & Expenses

Students learn how to manage realistic monthly expenses and bills, and their choices have long-term impacts on the events they experience.

realistic scenarios

Real-Life Scenarios, with Both Planned & Unexpected Expense

In an ideal world we would stick to our planned budgets. This is never the case in real life. Students learn through experience how each choice they make has consequences.

personal finance skills

Set Realistic Savings Goals to Build Net Worth & Quality of Life

Reinforcing the saving habit so students realize the importance of setting and maintaining savings goals. When unexpected life events pop-up they’re ready for them.

manage credit

Students Manage Their Credit and Learn About Credit Scores

Most budgeting games are focused on savings only, which is unrealistic. Students learn about balancing needs vs wants, and how to use credit responsibly to build their credit score.

How The Budget Game Works

personal budgeting game screenshot

Teachers Set The Rules

Teachers start out by choosing the specific rules of their class. These can also be updated as the simulation progresses through the semester.

  • What will be your student’s monthly rent?
  • How much will they pay for car insurance and utilities?
  • What wage will they earn at their part-time job?
  • How much income tax will be charged?
  • Does your class start as full-time workers, or college students with a part-time job?

Teachers can also customize the types of “Life Events” that occur in the game. Emphasize risk and insurance while you cover it in class, then encourage more events focusing on reading and understanding contracts, and much more!

how the game works

Students Start The Game

Your students’ goals are to build their net worth by transferring money from their checking account to savings, and build up their credit score by responsibly covering cash flow shortfalls (and paying off their balance on time).

Students progress through 12 “months” of the game, with each month taking about 20 minutes to complete. “Life Events” crop up every couple days, with unplanned expenses (and occassionally income) putting pressure on their budget – requiring careful planning!

Class rankings tie everything together, with students able to compare their net worth, credit score, and overall score with their classmates!

Life Happens, Learning Begins!

Students progress through the game, with similar (but not the same) events happening across the class. Students taking a risk will sometimes pay off, but sometimes it comes back to bite! This is an awesome starting point for class discussions – who did what, and how did it pay off?

While students work through the budgeting game, they also work through the lessons you set up from our customizable learning library (with built-in assessments) for a completely customized learning experience!

See the platform for yourself before committing to buy.

What’s Included?

budget game customizable settings

Customizable Settings

Choose the starting bank balance, fixed expenses, hourly wage, taxes and the types of pop-up cards to match your local standard of living. Select whether your students start as students with part-time jobs, or as full-time professionals. You can choose after how many months of gameplay they graduate.

monthly income and expenses

Monthly Budgets

Students get experience reviewing their monthly fixed and variable expenses, their projected income and set savings goals based on how much surplus or deficit they will have. They learn the important lesson of Pay Yourself First, by gaining the most points from hitting their monthly savings goals.

embedded lessons and quizzes

Embedded Lessons & Mini Games

A seamless experience so students are introduced to key concepts like comparison shopping, mortgages, writing checks, opportunity cost and more while they play the game. Also, they can play mini-games within the game to make it even more fun to learn personal finance.

Teaching Materials

Included with the Budget Game are additional class activities, group projects, lesson plans, and grading rubrics to integrate the game into your class. Click here to view all the teaching resources available.

Lesson and Curriclum library

Personal Finance

Investing

Economics

Business

Career Prep

When you buy the Budget Game, you also get access
to our learning library of over 300 assignments!

  • Built-in assignments and assessments
  • Following National and State Standards
  • Customize the lessons to fit your class and your students’ interests

Information Request

Pricing

Great for virtual or in-class learning. Bulk discounts are available for larger class sizes!

Budget Game
$10
per account
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  • Learning Library
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Stock Game
$10
per account
  • Stock Game
  • Learning Library
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Stock & Budget
Game
$15
per account
  • Budget Game
  • Stock Game
  • Learning Library
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