Budget Simulation

Description: Students will play through 12 months in a budget game as a full-time $40,000/year worker in NEA.

Grade Levels: 3-8

Simulation Deadline: January 15, 2027

Simulation Overview

Students will play through a virtual simulation living one year in Northeast Arkansas making $40,000 per year. They will have to make decisions about their bills, taking care of their apartment, working overtime, balancing a social life, and handling the random events life throws at them.

Throughout the simulation, students are scored on their Net Worth, Credit Score, and Quality of Life, all accumulating into their Overall score. Students can check these scores in their dashboard and see where they fall in the leaderboard.

For our competition, we will visit schools and give certificates for the highest Net Worth, Credit Score, and Quality of Life scores. Our top Overall students will receive a gift bag for practicing good financial wellness and balance to their life!

Registration Instructions

To keep track of our students and minimize login issues, it is important to register your students in a specific way.

Passwords – We recommend having a class password for all students to make it easier to remember (example – RedWolves.26)

Usernames – To organize the students for me and you, their usernames should be SchoolName_LastName_FirstName. This will hopefully make it easier for everyone to remember and I will be able to pull reports more easily (example – AState_Ricker_Melanie)

Emails – When your student registers, it may not ask for an email and they will need to add it to their account. To add an email, your student will need to hover over their Dashboard, select Edit Profile, and Update Account Info. If you don’t think your student’s email will work, you should be able to use your teacher email for all of your students. Please see the photos below –

This simulation is not formally paced so you can adjust it to best fit your classroom (your students could do this all semester or you can limit them to one month). There are learning assignments inside, but they are not required – just an additional learning option for your students. We do ask that you have your students go through the Budget Game Tutorials & Actions assignment before they start – this will introduce them to the game and give them a financial literacy pre-test. Once they finish the simulation, we also ask that they do the post-test assignment so we can see how their knowledge improves.

Registration Links

To sign up, please make sure you register your students for the appropriate grade-level competition.

3rd-4th Registration – https://app.stocktrak.com/members/register?sessionid=372816

5th-6th Registration – https://app.stocktrak.com/members/register?sessionid=372817

7th-8th Registration – https://app.stocktrak.com/members/register?sessionid=372818