Knowing how to manage one’s time is as important as managing money – which is the cornerstone of our new “Socializing” mini-game in our personal budgeting game!
How The Time Management Game Works
The Time Management game launches as part of our Weekend Events, triggering when a user chooses to Socialize with their friends on the weekend.
This game is all about choosing how to spend a Saturday with friends. They will have a variety of different events they can choose form, scattered across different neighborhoods of the “city” of the game.
Different types of events are available, located in different neighborhoods (and with different costs to participate). The user can build up their weekend schedule with as many, or as few, events as they wish!
Game Scoring
The Time Management game does not strictly have a “correct” or “incorrect” way to play. As this figures directly into the rest of the Budgeting aspect of the Budget Game, how they choose to spend their weekend (and which activities are going to cost them the most to participate in) will have a big impact on their monthly budget.
- Events give students Quality of Life points equivalent to 1.5 times their cost to participate (whereas spending in other parts of the Budget Game typically only gives 1 point per dollar spent).
- Each event has its own duration – between 1 and 4 hours.
- Travelling from one neighborhood to another takes time (greater time the farther apart they are). This means smart planning on events nearby means more events can be scheduled – and more points earned!
- Some events can only be done in the morning or afternoon – planning around friend’s availabilities (and making travel route planning more complicated!)
- If some of the available activities look to pricey (or too time-consuming), there is also the option to relax at home for free – which still grants a small boost to their Quality of Life (since they are relaxing – not burning out Studying or Working Extra Hours)
This magnifies one of the core concepts of the budgeting game: the trade-off of spending money with friends and events (improving the player’s Quality of Life) versus choosing less expensive entertainment options – but making it easier to reach their personal savings goals.
The Time Management Game joins our Comparison Shopping, Wealth Whiz Quiz, and Cafe Worker mini-games as the 4 available mini-games available at the end of each “week” of the game. Each game offers a different challenge – and a different potential bonus – giving students a reason to vary their weekend routine!
If you want to try either of our mini-games, but your school does not yet have a license for PersonalFinanceLab, you can sign up for our Teacher Test Drive to give it a spin!
Happy Learning!
-The PersonalFinanceLab Team.