Here’s a financial simulation game that really teaches the consequences of your financial decisions. The object is to amass $10,000 to buy a ticket to get off the planet Knab by July 4th, a little over 6 months from your arrival. At first it seemed pretty easy to do. All you need to do is get a job, save enough money to buy the ticket by July and off the planet you go. Boy, was I wrong.
This simulation offers a different set of choices each time you try it out. And each scenario throws a realistic financial curve ball that one would expect from the real world. Depending on your decisions, you might be involved in an automobile accident without any insurance. Or, if you do have insurance, there’s a deductible to pay. If you’re overdrawn funds from your bank account, you’ll be charged with an overdraft. Investments may or may not work out. There are taxes to pay, groceries to buy, mortgages or rent to pay. It took me a couple of times working through the simulation before I made the right decisions to get off the planet.
The site can be used by individual students or for whole class instruction. Activity sheets and assessments can be easily downloaded for individual use and duplication. The target audience is upper elementary to high school. The activity sheets cover each of the seven months in detail. Concepts include choosing a job in order to establish a regular source of income and filling in forms to inform the Knabian government about their withholding allowance; deciding on what to spend on regular monthly expenses such as food, transportation and slime repellant, setting up a Knabian checking and savings accounts complete with direct deposit and the ability to transfer funds writing your first check from the Bank of Knab and the making of many other real life financial decisions.
Here’s a simulation that is both fun and educational. Check it out and try to get off the planet Knab in one turn. |
