{DISCLAIMER: I received this product free through the Homeschool Review Crew}
As we guide our children toward adulthood, it is important for them to have real-life skills like creating and following a budget, and even investing for future. That is why I was thrilled to receive PersonalFinanceLab Budgeting Game, Stock Market Game and integrated curriculum from PersonalFinanceLab.com.
Are you looking for a creative and engaging way to teach your teen how to keep track of finances, budget their expenses, prepare the day when he must pay rent and shop for his own groceries? This online-based program is a great tool to help.
Over the last several weeks my 2 high school students and I have been playing along with real-life scenarios, learning about using a paycheck wisely, making choices about how we spend our time, and choosing how to spend our money and pay our bills. It’s been fun, and eye-opening. Let me tell you about our experience. There are 3 components to this web-based teaching tool. After registering for the program there are video tutorials and online help to assist in setting up the parameters of the game and lessons. Each student will have their own account, you as parent/instructor will have access to the dashboard, activities and lessons.
The Budgeting Game
With help from the tutorial videos, I registered my 9th grader and my 11th grader as well as myself. We each have the role of a full-time student with a part-time job. Each of us had the option to choose our living arrangements – live alone, with a room-mate sharing apartment or with several friends sharing a house. We also made lifestyle choices such as what sort of grocery budget we were willing to pay for and what sort of phone and internet plan would be best. These choices customized the game experience for each of us.
And then we enter the game, or rather, learning experience. This program leads the student through each calendar month, earning weekly paychecks and paying expenses. It is an interactive game and so each person must log on and deposit their paychecks, pay each bill on time (or not) and reap the benefits or consequences of their actions.
In our experience so far, we are paid at the end of each week. We can transfer money from checking account to savings account in order to build an emergency fund. Bills are issued for things like car insurance, rent, electric, etc. There are due dates for each of these and we can choose to pay immediately or put it off. Just like real life, there are fees for late payments.
Throughout the month random expenses pop up. We each have a choice of using our credit or debit cards. At the start of the game we have credit limit of $1000. As our credit rating increases and our spending habits improve our credit limit goes up.
One thing I’ve noticed in this program that I have not seen in others is the quality of life aspect. Each weekend we get to choose how we will spend our time – work extra hours, study, socialize or do housework. If you study too much, your quality of life may drop because of the lack of interaction with people or if you socialize too much you may find you are spending more money than you are taking in. The whole experience changes as you make different choices.
My teens are learning how to budget their money and how to be financially responsible by watching their bank accounts rise and fall and by keeping their credit cards under control. When my son found himself paying 3 speeding ticket in one month (WHAT?! yes, in the game it happened) he was able to take a hard look at the cost of his actions.
It takes about 20 minutes to work through one month of activity. That means we progress at a rate of 2 months per week since we are using this twice a week. It’s been fun, entertaining and educational too.
My daughter has a better understanding of the difference between debit and credit cards. My son has a better idea of how unexpected expenses can affect your bank account and your quality of life. I have been able to have some great conversations with them about life in the real world.
The Stock Market Game
I will be honest – the whole idea of investing makes my head swim and the idea of teach my kids about the stock market and how to wisely be involved there scares me. Even though I was initially intimidated to jump into the Stock Market Game, we jumped in anyway. This is a realistic stock market platform where students can buy and sell stocks, research companies and more.
There are many parameters to set in order to get started with this online trading program. For your students you will have options to choose what types of trades they can make, how often, how much money they are allowed to invest, etc. It takes a little time, but with the tutorials and help options we got things started.
I have been very impressed with the facts that the stock market game includes real time summaries of real life companies. Resources sharing this information can be found right on PersonalFinanceLab.com so students do not have to go off site to find information about the companies they are interested in.
Each participant is given $100,000 to invest. The dashboard gives information about the health of a company, charts and graphs showing how the stocks have been performing, and up-to-date trading information so you can track your earnings. It really is real life sort of stuff!
Integrated Curriculum
The Budget Game and The Stock Market Game are independent of one another, but together they make an excellent foundation for personal finance education and economics. There are several ways you can create a full course of study for your homeschool, your co-op group or a classroom.
Included in the administration section are lesson plans and assignments that can be used for students to work independently. The pages can be printed and bound in a notebook or used in the pdf format. There is also the option to use Google classroom, making it a great way to set up a virtual classroom.
There are over 300 lessons, activities, quizzes and calculators. The resources provided in PersonalFinanceLab.com can be used to apply high school credit for subjects such as Personal Finance, Math, Economics, etc. It is a good introduction to finance -whether it be personal or business finance.
We are enjoying PersonalFinanceLab.com and recommend it because will help encourage financial literacy in your middle/high school students when you use its PersonalFinanceLab Budgeting Game, Stock Market Game and integrated curriculum.
You can see how other families are using Personal Finance Lab by clicking on the banner below.

This sounds like such a fun way to learn about finances!!
What a great idea. The local high school pre-Covid has done something like this with local business people volunteering to help set up the scenarios and bringing in bankers, etc. This is much more in depth and something everyone can access.
It is such an important idea to give kids real life experience of how to manage money, the cost of living, etc.. I’ve had so many conversations with younger family members when they get that first job and can’t understand why everyone thinks it is so hard to earn a living when of course they have all their income focused on their wants with no needs coming out of it.
I’ll be passing on this tool.
Everyone needs this sort of education, right! Thanks for taking time to consider – have a fabulous day!