Teaching personal finance is super important, but it can be a real hassle for teachers. It takes up a lot of their time and energy, which can lead to burnout. That’s where PersonalFinanceLab comes in! We get it and want to make things easier for educators.
Our Teacher Resources page is like a gold mine for teachers. We’ve got everything sorted out for you so that you don’t have to start from scratch. We offer loads of lesson plans and teaching materials that are all ready to go. No need to spend hours creating content or figuring out how to make it engaging. We’ve already done the hard work for you!
Plus, our resources are designed to meet educational standards, so you can trust that they’re top-notch. We’re all about saving teachers time and effort while still giving students an awesome learning experience.
Teaching with PersonalFinanceLab is like having a super easy remote control for your classroom. Our platform is so user-friendly that teachers can breeze through their day without getting bogged down in admin stuff. You can make assignments in a snap, keep tabs on how your students are doing, and our lessons are like games – they’re fun!
You know that feeling when you’ve got a classroom full of different learners, and it’s tough to cater to everyone? Well, we’ve got your back. PersonalFinanceLab comes with interactive simulations that you can customize for each student. It’s like personalizing the learning experience for everyone, making your teaching more effective and keeping those students engaged.
We’re not just about the cool content and easy interface. Our Teacher Resources page is like having a whole team of tech support wizards at your beck and call. We’ll help you get started, give you tons of course outlines – basically, we’ve got your back from start to finish. No stress, just smooth sailing through your financial education journey.
At PersonalFinanceLab, it’s not just about the kids – it’s about you too! We’re all about giving teachers the tools they need to kick burnout to the curb. With our help, you can focus on the important stuff: making sure the next generation knows their finance game inside out.
But an article with a quiz at the end is not the best way to keep student engagement (which is why we have our games to begin with – to bring more excitement to your classroom). This is why we have been working hard to update our lesson library with more and more video content!
Introducing PersonalFinanceLab’s Video Libraries
Our team of financial literacy experts works to release new videos every month! These work to supplement core financial literacy concepts in our existing lesson library, but are also available for teachers to use stand-alone in their classes to introduce new topics. Here are some of our latest new releases:
We like to keep our videos short – just a few minutes – to make sure they keep students’ attention and act as an excellent way to introduce new topics to your class.
We are constantly adding new videos to our YouTube channel, and post them up to our Facebook Teacher Group with every release! Follow us to stay up-to-date with the last awesome, engaging resources for your classes!
In the world of educational technology, support matters as much as the tools themselves. PersonalFinanceLab understands this and stands out with its dedicated account managers. Every teacher at every school has their own dedicated account manager, whose main focus is ensuring teachers are using the PersonalFinanceLab platform with confidence, and being the teachers main point of contact for any questions they have.. These professionals provide invaluable tech support, offering a one-on-one support system that is indispensable for educators.
The onboarding process is where PersonalFinanceLab shines. Dedicated account managers make transitioning to the platform a breeze, working closely with teachers to guarantee a smooth start. With their wealth of experience working with other schools, they bring unique insights and innovative ways to utilize our simulations, tools, and teaching resources effectively in their classes. They assist with the initial setup, saving teachers precious time and energy. Moreover, they instruct teachers on how to customize the platform to match the unique teaching goals of each individual class. Thus ensuring that all features align seamlessly with their requirements.
However, the support doesn’t stop at onboarding; it’s an ongoing partnership. Our account managers serve as more than just setup guides; they are your partners in creating a seamless educational experience. Teachers can reach out at any time for assistance via email, phone, or through our constantly monitored live chat with any questions or issues they may have. Quick response times, and personal help with issues are crucial in the classroom, and our account managers deliver! These professionals are well-versed in the platform’s intricacies, making navigating a financial education platform a much more straightforward task. Their expertise ensures that teachers can make the most of PersonalFinanceLab’s extensive features and resources.
Customization is essential in effective teaching, and PersonalFinanceLab offers various options to meet specific classroom needs. Dedicated account managers collaborate with teachers to tailor the platform to their requirements. They discuss unique ways our games and resources can be used in their classes, aligning the platform perfectly with their teaching style and objectives. With their wealth of experience, they bring in insights and best practices from working with other schools, making the whole teaching process faster, easier, and more effective.
PersonalFinanceLab’s Budget Game is an awesome tool to help students master the core skills needed to build a healthy financial future. But while students are progressing from month to month, it can be hard to tell how well they are doing – apart from their Class Ranking.
With this in mind, we’re excited to announce our new Monthly Feedback system!
Monthly Feedback
When students finish each month of the Budget Game, they will get a prompt outlining how much progress they made towards each of the core game objectives:
Setting (and hitting) realistic savings goals
Building an Emergency Fund of at least $1,000
Building their Credit Score through responsible credit habits, and
Once they are on the right track for their other goals, spending responsibly to maintain a high Quality of Life.
We outline this in each step of our new Feedback System!
General Stats
First, students get a snapshot of the big items for the game:
Bills Paid On Time: what percentage of their bills did they pay before the due date? In the example above, I was late on most of my bills. Later in the feedback I will see exactly what this means for my financial future!
Total Late Fees: I was late on several bills – but not every bill has the same penalties for being late. This is the total amount of late fees I accumulated this month (hopefully $0!).
Total Interest Charged: If I am carrying a balance on my Credit Card, this will show the total interest charges I accumulated this month (again, hopefully $0!)
And Total Interest Earned: At the end of each month, students earn interest on their savings account. This shows how much I earned this month.
Savings Goal Feedback
Next, students get a summary of how well they worked towards their savings goal. Their feedback is based on two factors:
Did they hit their savings goal for this month, and
Was their savings goal above 10% or 5% of their expected income for the month
The feedback they get will congratulate them on hitting goals, with additional feedback on making sure to try to hit 10% of their expected income.
Credit Score
Next, students get feedback on how their credit score changed this month. Credit score improves as students pay bills on time and use their credit card responsibly (with the most points earned by using their credit card a bit, but paying off the full amount on time), with points lost by over-using their credit card or being late on bill payments.
The feedback students get will depend on how their credit score changed this month, with specific hints on what to do next month to earn the maximum points.
Quality of Life
The last feedback they get is on their Quality of Life – showing their total current score. Their specific feedback items are actually based mostly on their Emergency Fund – if students have not yet saved up a full $1,000 in their Savings Account, their feedback will remind them to work on saving up before spending extra cash. If they have built up their $1,000 fund, it will then confirm they are still setting (and hitting) that 10% savings goal.
If their savings are in good shape, then the game will congratulate them, and suggest they continue to invest in their Quality of Life as well – including buying new items for their Apartment.
We hope the End Of Month Feedback will bring the learning experience of the Budget Game to a whole new level, and help students really keep focus on the goals that matter.
Using a stock game in class to teach about investing has been a staple of classrooms for decades. And for the whole time, building a portfolio has been a great group activity to help students work and learn together.
But there is always one nagging problem with every group project – how can teachers measure the contribution of each team member?
Introducing Teams!
“Teams” is a feature of PersonalFinanceLab that allows teachers to put their students in groups for the Stock Game. Students in a Team still have their own login and their own individual portfolio, but it also adds a new Team Portfolio and Team Ranking, which aggregates all the team members together.
Creating Teams
After you have set up your class and gotten your students registered, teachers can create and manage Teams from their administration menu:
On the Manage Teams page, you will see all of your students without a team on the left side, and all of the current teams on the right side.
To create your first team, click the “Add Team” button on the top right.
All you need to do is set a username for each team. Like student usernames, they must be unique across all classes.
Once you have created a team, use the dropdown next to each student’s username to add them to a team. You can also remove students from a team at any time by clicking “View Team”, and removing a student. Students can be added or removed from teams at any time.
How Teams Work
When a student is in a team, they have two new items appear on their menu – “Team Portfolio” and “Team Rankings”.
Students still make their own trades in their own portfolio – but the Team Portfolio page shows the combined positions of everyone on that team, so they can coordinate their strategies.
For the Team Rankings, the portfolios of all team members are combined, and teams are ranked by their percentage return. This means it is okay to have teams with different numbers of team members – even though one team might have a combined portfolio value of $500,000 and another team might only have $100,000, the ranking will be based on how much their investment has grown (not just $500,000 vs $100,000).
Best of all, because each student has their own login, as the teacher you can still see what the contribution of each team member is – no more free riding!
We hope teams help take your class stock game to the next level – happy trading!
Picture this – you set up your class stock and budget games, along with assignments with tutorials and other info you want students to work through before finishing the games. But students always seem to want to play first, learn later. How can you incentivize them to get through their lessons and quizzes first?
Introducing Assignment Rewards
When you create an assignment on PersonalFinanceLab, one of the settings at the top is if you want to set a reward. Setting a reward gives students a cash deposit (either as “bonus cash” to their stock game portfolio, or a deposit into their Budget Game checking account). You can choose which type of bonus to give students with a dropdown:
By letting your students know there is a reward to be earned by using Announcements or Messages, it gives a clear incentive to finish the tutorials or other lessons before jumping back into the games.
Getting Creative With Rewards
You can also leverage the Rewards system to really get creative with your class structure. Here are some ideas for your class:
Complete The Stock Tutorials Before Trading
Set up your class stock game with very little starting cash (say, $100). Then create an assignment requiring students to go through each of the basic investing lessons and tutorial videos, granting a $9,500 cash reward to round out a $10,000 starting portfolio
Complete The Budget Game Tutorials Before Starting
Set up your class budget game with $0 cash in students checking or savings accounts. Only grant them their first $1,000 to “get started” as a reward for completing the budget game tutorial lessons
Connecting the Budgeting and Stock Games
Start out your students with very little starting cash in the stock game, and use a speed limit of 1 month for the budgeting game. Then every week, create an assignment requiring students to complete 1 month of the budgeting game, with a reward of $1000 to their Stock Game portfolio. This grants students cash to invest in the stock game when they first complete a month of the Budgeting Game
The combinations are endless – be prepared to get your students excited to finish their quizzes!
The PersonalFinanceLab Budgeting Game is an excellent way to get students thinking about money over time – sometimes even TOO engaging. Teachers may set up a game lasting 18 virtual months with the intention for the class to progress through it over the course of 10 weeks, only to find some students moved too far ahead and finished the whole game early.
How can teachers make sure students all keep the same pacing?
Introducing Speed Limits
“Speed Limits” is a setting for a class budgeting game. Setting a Speed Limit controls how many in-game months a student can progress for each week of real-life time.
For example, if you set up your class with a speed limit of “2”, it means students can complete up to 2 months of the budget game each week. This is cumulative – so after 2 weeks, students can complete up to 4 months (even if they just started), allowing students who need more time to catch up.
Speed Limits are one of your class Budget Game settings. Speed Limits can be set both when creating your class, or later from the “Edit Session Settings” page under “Administration” in the menu.
If your students progress up to the speed limit, the game will let them know with a warning message:
Students who have reached the Speed Limit can instead work on their assignments from the Learning Library, or continue to build their portfolio in the Stock Game while the rest of the class catches up.
We hope this makes it easy to manage your classes, and keep everyone on the right track!
Every teacher has been there – you’ve had your students complete a formative quiz, and you want to review their answers to see where the class is struggling. All the quizzes are graded, but going through every student one-at-a-time to find patterns can be frustrating and time consuming.
This is where our Class Quiz Summaries come in to help!
Class Quiz Summaries
The Class Quiz Summary is a tool available in the teacher administration reports. It can be accessed from the main menu, from “Reports” -> “Assignment Class Progress Reports”.
There are two tabs on this page – the “Progress Report” (where you can see the quiz results from each assignment for each student), and the “View Assignment” (which has the class summaries we’re focusing on today).
At the top of the report, you can find how many students in your class have fully completed this assignment, along with their average grade across all quizzes in this assignment. Note that students who have not yet completed a quiz are counted as “0” (which is why the average grade is so low in the example above – very few students have finished this assignment yet).
Below, for each quiz in this assignment, you can see what percentage of your class has finished, how long (on average) they took, and the average grade (again, students who have not yet taken the quiz are counted as 0).
Digging Deeper
The most valuable information for an educator can be found when you click “Details”. This will give you a breakdown of every question in this quiz, and (of the students who completed it), how many students got this question right and wrong.
This gives teachers a quick and easy birds-eye view of their class for each quiz. With the results above, I can see that most students knew what a “Preferred Stock” is, but I might want to spend a bit more class time covering the fundamentals of what a “stock” actually represents.
We know this will save teachers a lot of time, and make their classes more efficient than ever!
Picture this – you are a student playing through the PersonalFinanceLab budgeting game, and you get a prompt – do you want to buy an aquarium? The cost is $100.
In the real world, tons of people buy aquariums – it is a personal preference, but maybe you really like looking at fish. This is a Quality of Life decision. But with just a “buy or don’t” decision, it is hard to make that feel impactful for students. This is where the My Apartment feature comes in!
Introducing My Apartment
The My Apartment function is a place where students can see the impact of the decisions they have made throughout the budget game – and make new decisions too!
When students buy some items through the game, they will appear in their Apartment (like the aquarium example above). Bigger decisions have an impact too – like do they want a cheap, shabby apartment, or a more expensive pad.
An example of a cheap apartment – with cracked windows, many roommates, and leaks from the ceiling
An example of a luxury apartment, with two private bedrooms, granite countertops, and private balcony
The apartment is a great way for students to SEE the impact of their financial decisions. Number metrics like “Net Worth”, “Credit Score” and the balance of their savings account are one thing, but in the real world, there is value to one’s Quality of Life too. The essence of Personal Finance is weighing these decisions!
Showing Off
This means they need to be able to show off – and they can! From your class’s Budget Game Rankings page, there is a button next to each student to visit their “Apartment”, letting each student “visit” each other’s apartments to see how they have developed over the course of the game. This is an excellent launching point for class discussions – did students with the nicest homes meet all of their savings goals? And how is their credit score?
The Apartment brings a whole new dimension to the “Spend vs Save” decisions throughout the games – and a whole new level of engagement for students!
You’ve got an important announcement for your students. Maybe you already posted it to your classroom page, and sent out an email. Even wrote it on the board in class.
But if you want to be extra sure they see it, you also want to pop it in front of them while they’re working through the games on PersonalFinanceLab. This is where our Announcements and Messages come in!
Introducing Announcements and Messages
Announcements and Messages are an on-site way to communicate with your students on PersonalFinanceLab.
Using Announcements
An “Announcement” is a message that appears for every page for students while they use the site, appearing at the top right of every page.
Announcements can be text, images, links, or all three. They stay on the page for as long as you have the announcement active. This means Announcements a great way both to remind your students of important things coming up, but also a great way to give recognition to banks or credit unions that sponsored your class’s site license!
Teachers can post Announcements from their Admin menu. Go to “Admin” -> “Post A Message” to post your announcement.
Messages
Messages are another communication tool built into PersonalFinanceLab. The messaging center is an inbox for every student. Students can access their inbox through the message icon next to their username at the top of the page.
If students have unread messages, it will have a flashing indicator here, and on their Dashboard when logging in.
Students using the Stock Game will regularly get system messages about important events in their portfolio – like a stock they are holding issued a dividend or had a split. Students can also manage some of their inquiries to our Technical Support team through the messaging center when Live Chat or Email are not available.
But teachers can also send messages to their full class about important dates and announcements too!
Sending Messages
Teachers can send a message to their class from the Registration File report. Simply go to “Reports” -> “Registration”, and near the top of the page there is a button to “Message All Users”.
Just like email, you will set a subject line and the content of the message, then send! The Messaging System also accepts HTML content, if you want to include things like pictures or links in the message you send (if you aren’t sure how to write HTML, no problem – our support team can help)!
The Bottom Line
Posting Announcements and sending Messages are just one of the many tools teachers have available to reach their students on PersonalFinanceLab, along with their other courseware messaging systems. But it can be an important way to recognize sponsors, or give information you want your students to see explicitly while playing the games.
Starting in Fall 2023, students can also use the Messaging Center to manage their support tickets, removing the need for email entirely – an important improvement to protecting student data privacy. And speaking of privacy – only teachers and our staff can send messages or modify announcements – students cannot directly send messages to each other.
Let us know if you have questions about Announcements or Messages, and good luck this semester!
You’re planning to use the PersonalFinanceLab stock game in your class. You’ve used stock games before, and have seen some students buy something in the first week, then forget about it until the end of the semester.
You want to encourage students to keep an eye on their portfolio, and re-balance it over time, just like a real retirement account. What can you do?
Introducing Weekly Deposits
Weekly Deposits was designed exactly with this scenario in mind. With Weekly Deposits, you can start off your class stock game with much less “initial cash” – maybe just $500 or $1000 (which is a lot more tangible to students than a $100,000 portfolio).
Then each Monday, the system will automatically deposit extra cash into their account, which students can use to build their portfolio over time – just like a real, growing retirement account.
Here’s How It Works
When you create your class, choose the “Custom Settings”.
When you get to the Stock Game settings, you’ll have the option to set a “Weekly Deposit” for your class
You can also add weekly deposits later from “Edit Session Settings”
Now every Monday morning, students will have that extra cash available to invest
This extra cash is added to their Initial Cash, so it doesn’t count as pure portfolio returns (just like adding cash to a regular brokerage account).
Here’s WHY It Works
With a regular stock game, you will always have a few students who get super engaged and find it to be the best activity of the year. But students who don’t immediately get attracted to investing might not be so enthusiastic.
From our student feedback, the most common reasons for this fall into two buckets:
That the starting cash is just too much money – they’ll never have $100,000 in cash, so investing is only really for rich people
They spent time at the start of the semester picking a few stocks, and didn’t see a good reason to change their first picks
Weekly Deposits addresses both of these concerns. First, it allows teachers to start off with very little starting cash for their class (as little as $100), which brings down the bar for how much money a person needs before they think about investing.
Second, extra cash is added to their portfolio every week, forcing students to think about what they want to DO with it. Maybe they will add it to the same stocks they already had. But maybe they heard something about what Elon Musk is doing with Tesla this week, or that an AI revolution is making waves with Nvidia – is that something they want to add to their portfolio? And what does that mean for their other holdings?
We think that Weekly Deposits can bring your stock game to a whole new level of engagement – and that’s what we’re all about!
Students can work in teams to complete this assignment. After logging into PersonalFinanceLab, they can go to the Stock Screener, in the Investing Research section to compare two companies from the same industry. Adjusting the Industry filter, they can compare any companies that trade on the US stock exchange.
For example, students could choose Electronics/Appliances and compare SONY to ROKU or WEBR to GPRO. Once students have the industry, they must pick any 2 ticker symbols and compare their financial positions, analyst ratings and if your class is advanced enough conduct technical analysis on how the companies’ price and share volumes fluctuate over time.
Students will need to justify why they would invest in one company over the other based on the fundamentals of the company. I.E. which one is more likely to succeed based on their past performance? And therefore, which stock is more likely to give them more dependable returns?
Students can use the Quote Research page to get access to SEC filings, financial statements and more to complete the assignment. They can access the information they need for all publicly traded companies by selecting Financial Statements from the left side panel on the Quote page.
Income Statement
Students should compare the line EBIT (Earnings Before Income Tax) and EBITDA (Earnings Before Income Tax, Depreciation and Amortization) of both companies, which one is higher and why?
Can they see any major differences from one year to the next for one of the companies? If they research company news for that period, was it a global event that caused this change in price? Or did something happen to the company in particular?
For example, a change in leadership, or bad publicity after a bad product launch?
Balance Sheet
What are the current and non-current liabilities of both companies?
Have they gone up more for one company than the other over the last 2-3 years?
How much current assets does each company have?
If they suddenly had to pay off all their current debts (liabilities) would they have enough “liquid assets” to cover it?
I.E. Are the total current assets larger or equal to the current liabilities?
How much Retained Earnings does each company have? How much common stock do each have?
Cash Flow Statement
When comparing both companies, which company has more extra cash available at the end of each period?
Is that amount going up or down over the last 2-3 years?
What is the biggest source of incoming cash? Is it from Operating Cash Flow, Investing or Financing?
Note: A company in good standing will have most money coming from Operations.
Next students should consider the industry as a whole and answer the following questions.
Is this industry growing or is it established? Explain why or why not.
If this is a growing industry, are one or both companies experiencing rapid growth? How much are they investing in Research and Development?
Note: they can access this information from the Income Statement under Operating Expense.
If this is an established industry, are one or both companies offering dividends? If it is an established industry and the companies are not paying out dividends, why do you think that is? Where is the company investing their money instead?
Is it possible the industry is shrinking? If so, how much market share is there available for all the existing companies?
I.E. Are there any major changes in technology, regulation or some other global shifts that could put pressure on the industry as a whole?
For example, all travel was banned during the COVID-19 crisis impacting the entire tourism industry from hotels, airlines, restaurants to leisure or recreational activities.
Once students have completed their analysis, they should explain which of the two companies they would invest money in. Or why they will invest in neither option based on the industry and how it is currently performing.
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered.
Accuracy
Some or all the answers are incorrect.
The answers are correct, but the conclusions drawn from them may not be.
The answers are correct, and the conclusions drawn from them are logical and actionable.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling/ grammar errors.
Student Packet
Download and distribute the student packet for this activity by clicking the button below!
For an 18-week class, we recommend that students write their own personal investing strategies that is separate from the group portfolio project. This allows each student to reflect on their current financial goals and how they intend to meet them.
Students should choose one of the following financial goals:
Buying a Home
Hosting a major event, (like a wedding)
Starting a business
Starting a family
Retirement
Based on their selection, students should do some preliminary research into how much this financial goal will cost. If you decide to include their research as part of the assignment, consider using the second grading rubric.
Next, they will have to approximate how much time from today they have to reach this goal. Their time horizon will be a critical factor in what investment strategy they will choose. The assignment is going to walk them through answering some basic questions to get them thinking about the effects of compound interest, risk, time horizons, liquidity and how comfortable they are with investing.
What is your financial goal?
How many years from today do you expect you have to save and invest before you are ready to pursue your financial goal?
How much money will you be able to put into your savings for this financial goal every month?
How much money will that be per year until you reach the time you need the money?
What is the total cost of the goal at the time you intend to take your money out of your savings/investments? Remember to factor in inflation!
For example, if your goal costs $5000 today, and you need this money in 10 years, you will need to save $6,094.97 if inflation stays constant at 2%/year.
How much does your capital need to grow per year to allow you to reach your goal on time?
What investments will you use that will allow your investment to grow, keeping in mind there are risks of losing your initial capital, (and/or your savings)?
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations
Total Score
Completeness
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors.
Research
There is little research included, or the sources are not credible.
There are some good references or sources, but more research is required.
The student can fully support their conclusions based on the research they conducted.
Student Packet
Download and distribute the student packet for this activity by clicking the button below!
In this project we will be asking students to conduct a comparison-shopping exercise. They will first look at their most-preferred smartphone, and what it costs. They also need to specify what exactly makes this their preferred smartphone.
Next, students will need to identify cell phone service providers that support their phone. This is the bulk of the project. Students are asked to:
Compare the price of their preferred smartphone if they were to buy it outright versus make monthly installment payments through a cell phone provider.
Compare cell phone plans from at least two providers.
Students are asked to compare two different cell phone providers with similar plans. To drive home key financial literacy concepts, they are also asked to compare both providers’ total costs over a 3-year period. This will help students internalize:
The full cost of the phone when it is financed vs purchasing up-front.
The difference between the introductory (advertised) plan cost against what it costs long-term after the intro period expires.
Last, students are asked to evaluate their final choice, and consider the impact of the research they have done so far. Specifically, they are asked to consider how much of a better deal they could get themselves if they sit down for two full hours to compare different combinations between phones, cell phone plans, and cell phone providers to try to find the best deal. They are asked to compare this against an hourly wage rate to drive home the importance of comparison shopping in their day-to-day life.
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered.
Accuracy
Information about cell phone prices or plans is missing or inaccurate.
Information about cell phone prices or plans is present but does not have all appropriate references or calculations for the long-term costs.
All pricing information is present with appropriate sources, and long-term price calculations are present and accurate.
Insight
Preferred cell phones and/or cell phone plans are presented without any justification on why they are preferred.
Student lists their preferred cell phone and cell phone plan but does not explain why key features are important to the decision-making process.
The student demonstrates their preferred cell phone and/or cell phone plan and shows a clear distinction of why it is their preferred choice over the long run.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors.
Student Packet
Download and distribute the student packet for this activity by clicking the button below!
At the conclusion of the class period, students will build a final report and presentation synthesizing their experiences from both the budget game and stock game. Students will work in the same teams that they used for the Stock Game project to build this report. The Stock Game freezes all student portfolios automatically at the end of your class trading period – students do not need to sell off their holdings.
Each group will be asked to prepare a final report, plus a short presentation they will make to the rest of the class. Group presentations should not exceed 10 minutes, plus time for questions. Each student will also be evaluated based on a participation score, which is a combination of questions they asked during other presentations and a group self-assessment for the stock game.
The Final Report Should Consist Of:
Final Stock Game Report
Restate their original objective statement.
If they revised their objective statement as part of the “Check-In Project”
State their updated objective statement and explain why they made the change.
Restate their original team roles.
If they revised their team roles as part of the “Check-In Project”
State the updated team roles, and why they made the change.
Include a discussion of how they set their objectives, and how well they stuck to their objectives over the duration of the class.
Identify the final portfolio holdings of the team using a pie chart.
Identify the investments the team made with the biggest gains and worst losses. Include the total profit or loss for each.
Identify two major real-world events that had a significant impact on their portfolio
If they were starting over from scratch and building a portfolio for 7 years instead of 7 weeks, what would they as a team have done differently?
Final Budget Game Report
A summary of each student’s final positions in the budget game, including:
Final Overall Score
Final Credit Score
Final Quality of Life Score
Final Savings Account Balance and Checking Account Balance
The number of months each student was able to reach their savings goal
A discussion on the differences between the events in the budget game between the participants. Why did each team member finish with different scores? Did some team members encounter significant events in the game that made progress harder or easier than their teammates?
If students were playing through the game again, what would they do differently?
As a group, what do students think were the most realistic and least realistic parts of the budget game compared to what they expect to encounter in the real world.
A Group Evaluation
Team members should also separately submit a group evaluation of how much each team member contributed to the total project.
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness – Budget Game
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered for each team member.
Insight – Budget Game
Students have not identified significant differences in the game for each group member.
Some game differences were listed for each group member, but without discussion of the significance.
The group explores differences in how the game played out between the group members and how this impacted their final scores, highlighting key events that students handled differently and the long-term impacts of those events.
Reflection – Budget Game
Little or missing reflection on what students would do differently if playing again, and how the budget game compares to what they expect in the real world.
Students include a brief explanation of mistakes they made in the game and would improve on if playing again. Some explanation is provided of what they think would be different in the real world.
Students explain differences between the group members in what they would change if playing the game again. Specific examples are provided of the difference between the game and the real world, and what this would mean for a person managing a real budget.
Completeness – Stock Game
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered for each team member.
Insight – Stock Game
Students do not fully connect their initial and/or revised investing strategy or team roles to the final portfolio returns.
Students explain how their investing objective statement impacted their choice of investments, and how this would be different from other groups.
Students explain both how their investing objectives and team roles did or did not change over time based on how their portfolio performed. They include key real-world events that had a large impact on their portfolio, and what this meant in the context of their objective statement.
Reflection – Stock Game
Little to no reflection is provided in how the team would adapt their investing strategy for a long-term portfolio.
A short explanation is provided about what went right and what went wrong as part of their team portfolio, and what they would do differently if the game lasted 7 years.
Students propose a new or revised objective statement for a 7-year portfolio, outlining what they learned as part of this class but also why investing for a longer term is different than the class game.
Participation – Stock Game
Students receive poor or zero scores from teammates, indicating very little engagement with the stock game project.
Students receive average participation evaluation from their teammates regarding stock game participation.
Students receive outstanding participation evaluation from their teammates as part of the stock game project.
Participation – Presentations
Students did not ask questions or provide comments to other groups’ presentations.
Students asked cursory or irrelevant questions to other group presentations.
Students asked meaningful and insightful questions to other groups after their presentations.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors.
Student Packet
Download and distribute the student packet for this activity by clicking the button below!
In this project, we will be asking students to investigate different budgeting “apps” and resources that people use to help manage their money. Student will be challenged to use critical thinking to address two primary concerns with budgeting apps:
What features would really be important to them to help manage their budget?
“Free Apps” are never free. How do the companies that make these apps make their money?
Students are asked to identify at least two different budgeting apps or online resources, and do a short review of the strengths and weaknesses of each app. For each app, they are also challenged to think about how the app creator makes their money. Do they charge for the app, or do they try to sell the users other services later? How would this impact how they use the app in the long run?
After each student picks their favorite app, they also are asked to identify its weaknesses that might make it challenging to use in the long run. Finally, students are asked to provide a comparison of using an app to track their personal finances against using a spreadsheet (or just pencil and paper) over 1 month, 1 year, and 10 years.
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered.
Accuracy
Information reported about the apps being reviewed has factual errors.
The answer presented is accurate, but not complete. Important features or drawbacks are missing.
Student provides a complete and impartial assessment of each of the apps being reviewed.
Insight
Incomplete or unrealistic understanding of how the app’s developers make money or how the app would be used.
Basic understanding of the app’s revenue model and how it could be used in the real world.
Strong understanding of how the apps make money, how this might create conflicts on how the app is used, and creative approaches to what this means for users.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors.
Student Packet
Download and distribute the student packet for this activity by clicking the button below!
This project is placed towards the end of the Investing unit, after each student has already begun to place a few trades. Ideally you will also have organized students into Teams as well.
From this point of the class onwards, students will continue to be managing their portfolio as a project in the background (just as they continue to progress in the Budget Game), but we will be dedicating less in-class time to the project. The purpose of the Investing Strategy Document is to have your teams: Define the overall objectives of the Team Portfolio. This could be something as simple as ‘maximize total returns’, or more nuanced, like ‘build a portfolio representing at least 6 different sectors that outperforms the S&P 500’.
This objective statement will be referred to in later projects for students to reflect on how their portfolio evolved compared to the original objectives.
Define the roles of each team member. While each student will be placing trades in his or her portfolio, they may have different individual objectives (for example, one student may focus on healthcare and financial stocks for their research, while another student focuses on ETFs and mutual funds)
Each student should also examine the portfolio they have built from the trades they placed since the start of the project until now. Do they believe that their original trades are in line with their new strategy, or will they need to sell off many holdings and start over?
And finally, the team should create an estimate of how many total trades they expect to place per week to fulfill their investment objectives.
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered.
Creativity
The objectives and goals of individual team members are not very well defined.
The overall objectives of the team, and the role of each team member is present, but the roles of each team member are not very well connected to the group’s overall objective.
The overall objective is well-defined with specific goals or milestones in place. The role of each individual team member is also well defined and connected to how it relates to the overall strategy.
Insight
Little to no analysis is presented on how the team’s trades so far fit into their new objective statement.
Students present an analysis of their previous trades considering their new objective statement, but activities of students so far do not factor into team roles.
The objective statement and team roles show a basis both in topics covered in class, and the trades students have made so far have a clear connection to the roles established for each team member.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors
Student Packet
Download and distribute the student packet for this activity by clicking the button below!
The stock game project utilizes PersonalFinanceLab’s stock game to teach students about investing. The key to a successful class stock game is making the game last as long as possible so students have exposure to the real markets and see how real-world news impacts their portfolio. Therefore, our course outline places the investing unit early in the class – just after budgeting.
For a 9-week class, we make the following recommendations for your class rules:
Use $10,000 starting cash. What this means is that students will start with $10,000 of cash to invest (which is large enough to buy almost any stock, but small enough to be a tangible number for most students).
Also include $1,000 weekly deposits. This means the system will also deposit an additional $1,000 in each student’s account every Monday morning, which students need to continually invest (just like making regular contributions to their retirement account).
We also recommend using the “Teams” function of PersonalFinanceLab. This will allow you to group your students into groups of two or more for the portfolio simulation. While each student has their own initial cash and portfolio, we also group the portfolios of “Teams” together for additional team rankings. This gives both you and your students a clear view of both their individual performance and their team to encourage collaboration, but not freeloading. The team rankings are based on the total % return of the team, and so it is not a problem if you have groups with uneven numbers of students.
At the end of the class, the final project involves a report and presentation of takeaways from both the stock game and budget game. We recommend this as a group project, based on Teams set up at the beginning of the class.
Similarly, to the Budget Game, the Stock Game project involves multiple smaller assessments: formative “Investing Strategy Report” and “Check-In” reports, and a summative final report and presentation, combined with the budget game. All three reports are best addressed as group projects, based on Teams in PersonalFinanceLab.
Unit 2.1 Starting the Stock Game – First Trades
Students will start the stock game at the beginning of the investing unit by exploring, watching tutorial videos, and placing their first trades by buying stocks that they have heard of before and think are doing well. Extensive research is not needed for the first trades – students will learn more about diversification and how to build a proper portfolio throughout the investing unit. Towards the end of the Investing Unit, students will begin working more directly with their Team to define their Team’s investing objectives and how to achieve them, which will continue through the duration of the course.
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors.
The second project of the budget game takes place after 7 months of play, immediately before beginning our unit on Careers. This timing is important – after 6 months, your students will have “graduated” from school in the game and begun their first full-time job, and so at this point students have gotten their first taste of full-time work. There are several changes to the game when the students enter “Full Time Mode”, but the most important are:
Students move out of their old place and need to choose new, more expensive, fixed expenses (since they no longer have roommates).
Students will now work a fixed 40 hours per week and receive their paychecks every 2 weeks instead of weekly.
Students’ starting wage at their new job is based both on your class settings, but also by how much they “studied” in school. Students who did a lot of studying while in school will have a higher starting wage than students who did not.
“Study” on the weekends is replaced with “Professional Development”. Conducting a lot of professional development can lead to raises at their job.
New bills for Student Loan Payments and Health Insurance are added.
There are new events added to the game to reflect their full-time status. Some students will have the opportunity to adopt a pet (which will improve Quality of Life but cause a permanent increase to their grocery bills) or buy a new car (which will increase their Quality of Life but cause a permanent increase to their Car Insurance and Car Payment bills).
The game is generally balanced so students will have just as easy (or hard) of a time reaching a 10% savings goal each month as they did in part-time mode, but bigger expenses, new bills, and less frequent paychecks make it more difficult to manage their cash flow over the course of the month. Building a higher credit score and having a higher credit limit to help cover cash crunches becomes much more important.
The first Budget Game activity we recommended as homework, followed up by a short discussion at the start of the next class. This activity we recommend to start with a 10 minute in-class discussion of what students noticed was different in the game once they entered full-time mode (ideally identifying a student who did a lot of “studying” before and now is earning more at their job than their peers), followed by a short 5-minute homework to write a half-page plan of how they expect to approach the game differently now that they are a full-time worker.
Evaluation is based on the creativity and insight of the student’s response based on elements they were able to pull out of the in-class discussion.
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Participation
Student did not participate in-class, and the written response was missing or incomplete.
The written assignment was completed, but student did not participate in-class.
The student participated actively in the in-class discussion and submitted a complete assignment.
Insight
Description of changes to the game were not in line with topics covered through the in-class discussion
Description of their new game plan incorporates elements from in-class discussion.
Description of new game plan incorporates both in-class discussion and other expectations on how the student thinks the game may continue to evolve.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors
Budget Game – Activity Rubric
The budget game is balanced students playing a “perfect game” following all financial literacy best practices should be able to:
Set and hit a savings goal of least 10% of their income every month
This would earn 7,200 “bonus points” through the game
Build a $1,000 emergency fund
This would earn 2,000 “bonus points” through the game
Earn a total credit score of at least 780
And accumulate at least 9,000 “Quality of Life” points.
We do not recommend student evaluation based on their final Net Worth, and this does not factor into their overall score. We do, however, include this on the class rankings page so students can see their final standing.
This would give a student playing a “perfect game” an overall score of around 30,000 points. However, because there can be a learning curve (especially in the first three months) and these scores may be different depending on the individual settings teachers make for their class, our recommended student evaluation of the game is a bit more flexible.
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness
Student has completed fewer than 8 months of the game
Student has completed between 8 and 11 months of the game
Student has completed all 12 months of the game on time
Emergency Fund
Student finishes the game with less than $500 in their savings account as an Emergency Fund
Student finishes the game with between $501 and $999 in their savings account as an emergency fund
Student finishes the game with over $1,000 in their savings account as an emergency fund
Monthly Savings Goals
Student has accumulated fewer than 3,000 “bonus points” for hitting savings goals
Student has earned between 3,000 and 8,000 “bonus points” for hitting their savings goals
Student has earned over 8,000 points through the game by setting and hitting realistic savings goals
Credit Score
Student has a final credit score of less than 500 points
Student has a final credit score between 500 and 650
Student has a final credit score above 650
Quality of Life
Student has a Quality-of-Life score less than 3,000 points
Student has a Quality-of-Life score between 3,000 and 6,000 points
Student as a Quality-of-Life score above 6,000 points
Student Packet
Download and distribute the student packet for this activity by clicking the button below!
At this point students will be about 2/3 of the way through their stock game. The “Check-In” project is a short exercise for teams to evaluate how the group has performed so far, both relating to their original objective statements and how each team member has been fulfilling their roles.
The primary objective of this project is for students to look critically at how their investing strategy has worked (or failed) so far and offer an opportunity to update their objective statement or team roles for the last leg of the class.
Students are asked:
Identify their team’s current ranking in the class.
Identify how well they have stuck to their original investing strategy and team roles.
Identify real-world events that have had both a positive and negative impact on their team portfolio.
Based on their performance so far, do they feel they need to update their objective statements or team roles?
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors
Student Packet
Download and distribute the student packet for this activity by clicking the button below!
The Budget Game on PersonalFinanceLab is a long-term project where students will learn how to manage cash flow, savings goals, and credit over the course of your class. While the budget game is customizable for every class, for a 9-week course we recommend using a 12-month game (with each game taking 10-20 minutes to complete), with students “graduating” after 6 months.
What this means is that your students will start the game taking on the role of a college student with a part-time job. They will have roommates (and so lower bills), but variable hours at work (and so their income each month will vary). After 6 months, students will “graduate” from school and start their first full-time job – right as the other topics in class transition to career planning. This will give them more consistent income, but their bills also increase (because they move into their own apartment) and new bills are added for student loan payments and health insurance.
Your students will need to complete “months” of the budget game a little more than once per week of your class. Approximately every three weeks, we also have recommended in-class activities to encourage students to reflect on what has happened so far in the game and encourage a class discussion of each student’s journey.
Besides setting aside time for students to play the game itself, we also have four other sub-projects relating to the game – a “Transaction Review” after the first three months, a “Midpoint Review” after students are halfway through the game, and a Final Report/Presentation that students can prepare individually or in groups. We also have a grading rubric for how students performed in the budget game itself.
The final presentation/report combines both elements of the stock game and budget game. Students will be participating in the stock game in teams, and so the final report also has students compare their final budget game performance with their teammates.
Unit 1.6 – Budget Game – Transaction Review
If you are following wither the 9-Week or 18-Week Course Outline, this project is ear-marked for Unit 1.6. However, you can use this grading rubric at any time to accompany the Budget Game.
The first project leveraging the Budget Game comes at the end of the first unit (covering budgeting and spending plans). At this point, students will have completed their first 3 months of the game. The primary goal of the first project is to check students’ understanding of the core concepts of the game, and if they have a basic understanding of what’s happening in the game and how this translates to the real world so teachers can help clarify key learning takeaways before students dive too deep into the game itself.
They will be asked to utilize their Debit Card Statement, Credit Card Statement, and Savings Account Statements to conduct a brief review of their spending so far in the game and will be asked basic questions about their status in the game. Evaluation at this stage is based mostly on how well the students organize their thoughts and answer a few basic math questions.
Specifically, they will need to:
Identify if they currently have any outstanding bills, or if they were faced with unexpected challenges paying their bills on-time in the game.
What was their average savings goal each month? Were they able to consistently reach that goal?
Identify their current credit score and give a summary of actions they have taken in the game that they believe improved or hurt their credit score.
How did they most frequently spend their weekends in the game? Do they think it is best to focus on one or two activities, or balance their time across different activities?
Build a summary of their total spending, categorizing spending by:
Money spent on bills (known expenses)
Money spent on other events in the game (unknown events)
Students in the game have the option to change some of their fixed expenses for a fee (for example, breaking their lease and moving to a cheaper/more expensive apartment). Do they believe that this will be necessary to maintain their budget in the long run?
Based on how the game has gone for the first three months, and their current ranking on the budget game rankings page, what (if any) changes do they plan to make to how they play the game going forward?
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness
Not all questions have been answered.
All questions have answers, but some responses may lack full detail.
All questions are fully and completely answered.
Style and Presentation
Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors.
Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors.
Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors
Budget Game – Activity Rubric
The budget game is balanced students playing a “perfect game” following all financial literacy best practices should be able to:
Set and hit a savings goal of least 10% of their income every month
This would earn 7,200 “bonus points” through the game
Build a $1,000 emergency fund
This would earn 2,000 “bonus points” through the game
Earn a total credit score of at least 780
And accumulate at least 9,000 “Quality of Life” points.
We do not recommend student evaluation based on their final Net Worth, and this does not factor into their overall score. We do, however, include this on the class rankings page so students can see their final standing.
This would give a student playing a “perfect game” an overall score of around 30,000 points. However, because there can be a learning curve (especially in the first three months) and these scores may be different depending on the individual settings teachers make for their class, our recommended student evaluation of the game is a bit more flexible.
Grading Rubric
Needs Improvement (1)
Meets Expectations (2)
Exceeds Expectations (3)
Total Score
Completeness
Student has completed fewer than 8 months of the game
Student has completed between 8 and 11 months of the game
Student has completed all 12 months of the game on time
Emergency Fund
Student finishes the game with less than $500 in their savings account as an Emergency Fund
Student finishes the game with between $501 and $999 in their savings account as an emergency fund
Student finishes the game with over $1,000 in their savings account as an emergency fund
Monthly Savings Goals
Student has accumulated fewer than 3,000 “bonus points” for hitting savings goals
Student has earned between 3,000 and 8,000 “bonus points” for hitting their savings goals
Student has earned over 8,000 points through the game by setting and hitting realistic savings goals
Credit Score
Student has a final credit score of less than 500 points
Student has a final credit score between 500 and 650
Student has a final credit score above 650
Quality of Life
Quality of Life Student has a Quality-of-Life score less than 3,000 points
Student has a Quality-of-Life score between 3,000 and 6,000 points
Student as a Quality-of-Life score above 6,000 points
Student Packet
Download and distribute the student packet for this activity by clicking the button below!
Order your PersonalFinanceLab 3-year school license and get a free ticker
At PersonalFinanceLab.com, we have helped many schools transform their traditional classrooms into exciting Personal Finance or Business Labs by combining our gamified platform with colorful tickers carrying the latest stock prices and business news.
Now with our partnership with our preferred ticker vendor, Rise Display, we are providing schools a voucher for a FREE ticker when they purchase a 3-year PersonalFinanceLab.com school-wide site license.*
Here’s what you get:
1. A School-wide Site License to PersonalFinanceLab (Year 1)
$3,375
2. A School-wide Site License to PersonalFinanceLab (Year 2)
$3,375
3. A School-wide Site License to PersonalFinanceLab (Year 3)
$3,375
4. A colorful 4.5”x93” Rise Display ticker *
$2,199
5. 3 Years of Ticker Data License
$960
Total Value
$13,284
FOR ONLY
$9,995
Our PersonalFinanceLab.com site offers 4 resources in 1: a budgeting and money management game, a stock market game, an embedded curriculum, and certification. The School-wide Site License allows all the students at a specific school location to access our platform.
Rise Display’s low cost LED tickers typically ship within 48 hours when in stock. The specifications are as seen below:
Pixel Pitch: .23 inch (6mm)
Cabinet Height: 4.6 inches
Cabinet Widths: 48″, 63″, 78″, 85″, 93″, 122″, or 176″
Cabinet Depth: 1.9 inches
Mounting Depth: Adjustable 2.8 to 7.5 inches
Color Depth: RGB (Full Color) 65,000 color shades
Network: Hardwire RJ-45 or Wifi
Weight: 2 pounds per foot
Max Power: 11.2 watts per foot
1 year manufacturer warranty (return to depot)
Please contact your PersonalFinanceLab account manager, fill out this form to get more info on this offer, or visit Rise Display for more information on their tickers.
*Orders must be received by August 1, 2023. When we receive your Purchase Order, we will give you a Rise voucher valid for the ticker and data license described above. Schools will contact Rise to place an order for tickers. Tickers require electricity, wifi internet connection, and installation (mounting brackets included). You may use this voucher as a partial payment on a larger ticker if you wish. The image is representative only.
That is the biggest question teachers need to know after using any resource in the classroom – did it actually improve outcomes? And we at PersonalFinanceLab could not agree more.
That is why a year ago we implemented our Pre- and Post- tests as part of our Assignments engine, allowing teachers to see how their students improve over time. Pre- and Post- test data is also an essential part of our design process for our financial literacy games and curriculum, and a big part of our feature roadmap in the future.
That is why we are excited to announce that Pre- and Post- tests are now an automatic part of the student experience on PersonalFinanceLab! This means students will automatically be prompted to complete the pre-test when they first sign into PFinLab, and will be prompted to take the post-test at the end of their class.
What do the Pre- and Post- tests cover?
Our Pre- and Post- tests consist of 29 questions across 5 categories:
Saving, Spending, and Budgeting
Risk Management and Insurance
Using Credit and Debt
Investing
Earning Income / Employment / Income Taxes
The questions were developed with reference to the Jump$tart national standards for personal finance, and have been developed to be usable for ANY resource that aims to improve outcomes for financial literacy education – not just the PersonalFinanceLab platform. The full methodology on the test development can be found here.
How can I see my students’ results?
Teachers can also have access to the results of the pre- and post- tests for their class.
For teachers who have a site license and create their own sessions, they must simply include an “Assignment” requiring the Pre-Test (set up before their students register and begin using the platform), and another assignment requiring the Post-Test. This can be found in the Assessments section of the assignment creation:
After your students have completed the assessment, you will be able to view their results in the standard Assignment Reports.
Please note that if your students have already signed in and completed the pre-test before you have created your assignment, their results will not be visible (however, our product team can still provide a custom report for your class).
If your class is participating through another public challenge (like our Financial Literacy Challenge), the pre- and post- test results will be available through the standard reports on your Instructor Administration page.
Let us know if you have any feedback – and we look forward to serving your classes soon!
Stash101 shuts down as a money management and investment simulation for schools, with all existing accounts disabled on January 31, 2023.
What happened to Stash101?
Stash is primarily a banking app, which also can include a personal checking account. Stash101 was a free “practice” version with other educational resources built in, designed for schools and help students open their first accounts after graduation.
While there has not been an official press release for the reason Stash101 was shut down, this change happened shortly after an announcement that Stash is changing their partners for the banking side of their app. This may mean that the new version of Stash no longer matched the Stash 101 interface, or that their new partners were not interested in direct marketing to schools and students, as this can create a lot of student data privacy headaches for app providers that do not normally work with schools.
Best Alternative to Stash101 For Schools
While this comes as a blow for many teachers who relied on this app for their personal finance class resources, there are other options!
PersonalFinanceLab is the closest alternative available for schools today, containing a money management/budgeting simulation to manage bank accounts, credit cards, income, expenses, and more over a simulated year, plus a real-time stock game with stocks, ETFs, bonds, mutual funds, options, and more – all configurable by teachers for their own class contests. PersonalFinanceLab is designed specifically for schools and classrooms.
This year, PersonalFinanceLab is holding a free Financial Literacy Month event during the month of April, giving free access to their budgeting game and stock game to all classrooms. Schools interested in setting up their own sessions with their own rules, as well as using their games and resources in the Fall, can acquire a site license for extended access.
For Spring 2023, we have one of the most exciting additions we’ve ever seen to the PersonalFinanceLab Budget Game!
One of the most consistent items of feedback we get from students every semester in our budget game was that most events of the game had no long-term visual impact – a choice to buy an aquarium, for example, might improve their “Quality of Life” score, but they could not actually see what they bought, or compare against other students.
Our new Apartment changes that!
What is the Apartment?
Now every student will have their own place to call “home” as they progress through the budget game. The initial look of their Apartment depends on what students choose for their living arrangements at the start of the game:
This determines where their “stuff” will be when they check later; a run-down crash pad, or a swanky new building. Students will start with the “bare essentials” – folding chairs, a basic bed, and some other necessities.
However, as students progress through the game, their Apartment will start to develop based on their purchasing decisions. Even better, students can choose to purchase additional furniture for their Apartment at any time, contributing to their Quality of Life score!
Students can also visit the Apartments of their classmates at any time from the Rankings page to show off their new digs!
What This Means For Learning
The Apartment is not purely decorative – there are some essential learning enhancements for the classroom. Now with the Apartment:
Students can “Save Up” for purchases, instead of just the random events that occur in the game
More opportunities for students to improve their Quality of Life
Which also can make it harder to set and reach Savings Goals, since students have more temptations to over-spend!
If you want to try out the Apartment for yourself, feel free to hop onto our Teacher Test Drive challenge and complete your first month of the budget game!
Hello! My name is Marta Watson, and I work at Bishop Kelly High School, in Idaho. I currently teach Business and Economics!
Can you share a positive experience using PersonalFinanceLab?
“Oh, my goodness, I can share 100 [examples]. The kids literally walk in with their laptops open talking to each other about their portfolios and their strategies. You can tell by how many trades they’re making that they are hooked on both the market and budget games, and that they’re not just trying to win.” Watson said.
In my school only game, I’ve got students with over two hundred trades, which is remarkable. But I think the excitement [is the best part], and the conversations I hear like, “Well, why would you be investing in that?” “Where did you find that?” “Well, I found it on this website or I read it on Bloomberg, or I saw it here…”
It’s really interesting listening to them talk about it, because they’re using some very high level analytical and synthesizing skills. Which, as teachers, is exactly what we want them to do. They are asking themselves how can I step in and out of the market at the right time? All of that requires attention to current events and market trends.”
What is your favorite feature of PersonalFinanceLab?
“I like how interactive it is. I also like how I can actually monitor what the kids are doing. And if I give them an assignment from the website, I require both 100% Completion and 100% accuracy on their assignments.” Watson said.
“It’s really more challenging for the kids to know that they finished it perfectly.”
Do you recommend PersonalFinanceLab to other teachers? If so, why?
“Having a tool that is outside of the classroom, but is connected to the classroom curriculum and goals is powerful. It really affords students an opportunity to learn the material, and they can drive the direction they want to go, because I don’t tell them what to invest in.” Watson said.
“I teach them how to research. I teach them things to go look at, but I don’t tell them what to do. And then bit by bit, they start talking to their parents or their grandparents asking for other strategies. Each semester I probably have at least a half dozen students open up their own accounts at brokerage firms as they turn 18 to begin investing on their own. That is powerful. The students are realizing that this isn’t just a game, but actually a learning platform that helps them understand how they can augment their life earnings and control their own destiny.”
Want to get similar results at your school?
Book a discovery call to find out how PersonalFinanceLab could be the solution you’ve been looking for.
PersonalFinanceLab is a financial simulation program that offers complete control to teachers to choose what their students experience and provides live customer service too.
Launching a New Finance Department
Bruce Groberman is the Director of Financial Education at North Point Schools, which operates 3 private schools (Boys School, Girls School and Co-Ed High School), in Calgary, (Canada). He was hired to head the finance department and played a key role in selecting the financial simulation they would use for their stock market trading program. They started using SIFMA as a stock market game in 2017.
“They’re very supportive… But it was missing a lot of important features that we required. You can only trade US stock exchanges.”
Bruce Groberman
As a Canadian school, they needed the flexibility to change their currency to CAD dollars, but this wasn’t available. However, even if North Point school was based in the US, they wouldn’t have been able to trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), the London exchange, or any other international exchanges.
None of these exchanges were available on that platform. Along with other trading settings that were very important for the program that Bruce was setting up. Their goal was to find a platform they could customize to accommodate the wide range of students who would be using the program. It was important they had the flexibility to adjust the settings to the students’ growing understanding of the financial markets.
End of Semester Celebration for North Point Schools
Customizable Settings for Inclusive Learning
“When I discovered that PersonalFinanceLab had virtually everything that was missing from the stock market game and a lot more, we switched,” he said, “Now we have the ability to set highly customized challenges for different grades.”
Bruce and his students started using PersonalFinanceLab in Fall 2022, and he’s been able to set-up and continue to customize the platform ever since. Some settings Bruce couldn’t do before, and now he can include:
Setting their own margin rates
Setting their own interest rates on cash balances
Setting their own start and end dates for their challenges
As well as setting multiple challenges!
Recently some students requested to have the Japanese market opened. Bruce can now accommodate requests like these from his students. Keeping them engaged to explore and learn as they go. He explained, “because PersonalFinanceLab is so feature rich, it lets me give a more comprehensive perspective on the financial markets and investment planning to the students.”
Awesome Digital Badges
On top of the customization, he said the digital badges were another feature that has really enhanced the student experience. It’s also made his life easier because the badges are automatically awarded for investing achievements. Bruce explained how the badges of achievement really motivated his students to keep on learning and expanding their horizons.
“I don’t have to go through and figure out who to give what badge to. Plus your badges deal with way more than just who had the most equity…you have things in there that really proves that they’re learning about investing, rather than who’s the winner with the most money. So, your digital badges are awesome,” he said.
How Live Support Saved the Day
Bruce had a good story to tell about working with the Helpdesk team on their first day using PersonalFinanceLab. There was a technical issue. His account had been set-up with the wrong email, and he was locked out. He only had an hour with his students and time was of the essence.
“I figured this is never gonna happen. They’re never going to clear this up…”
Bruce Groberman
But then someone on the live chat answered his message. They were able to fix his account so his students could get registered and using the program right away.
“I’ve given your people a lot of stuff that needed to be done like, right away, unfortunately… So the quick response means a lot to me.”
Bruce Groberman
That was why he said, “My personal favorite feature is the online support during trading hours. It’s great! If we had something that needed to be dealt with right away, we could never get that done with SIFMA.”
The Student Perspective of PersonalFinanceLab
“You know, they don’t treat it like a video game, but they have the same enthusiasm, as they would have in a video game competition,” he said. He explained how the biggest benefit for the students were the 15-Minute price updates, and the live rankings.
“That is big. It keeps the students engaged in the challenge. And it keeps them interested in what’s happening in the market, in the economy, and in the world. On a minute-by-minute basis.”
The North Point Finance Department Now
Today, Bruce has students from grade 4 to 12 who can understand the basic concepts of investing, and place multiple trades…on the very first day that they’re introduced to the program. Students check their portfolios in the hallways between classes and everyone in the school is now trading.
Every student placed a trade before the end of their first day after being introduced to the program.
Currently North Point School Has:
130 students participating on PersonalFinanceLab
3 completely customized investing challenges
Enabled exchanges include US, Canada, Japan and Tel Aviv
Enabled trading strategies include stocks, cryptocurrencies, and short selling
Each student has their own virtual stock account
Students buy and sell trades independently
Keeping Student Focused and Engaged
Students can do comprehensive research and never leave the site!
For the younger students, it makes it confusing to leave the platform because the more tabs left open the more complicated it gets. On this topic Bruce said, “For the most part, we’re able to stay right within PersonalFiannceLab to get all the research that we need.”
In closing, Bruce said that teachers shouldn’t be scared or hesitant to use PersonalFinanceLab.
“It doesn’t make any difference if [teachers] know anything about the stock market. At all. If a kid in grade 4 can figure it out, anyone can. Plus it’s fun. PersonalFinanceLab takes care of everything for you. Your students will enjoy learning about investing and finance in a real-world environment. It is identical to a real trading platform you would get in TD or BMO.”
Want to get similar results at your school?
Book a discovery call to find out how PersonalFinanceLab could be the solution you’ve been looking for.
Gamification has been a buzzword in education for over a decade. Teachers now have access to more games for the classroom than ever, with a dizzying array of options to fill a limited number of weeks in the classroom.
To try to help teachers pick out the best possible options for your students, we want to lay out some of the core concepts of what gamification is, why it works in education, and some best practices for classroom implementation.
What Makes a Game?
Games have a formal definition, but that is boring, so let’s skip it. Instead, what really matters for gamification in the classroom is that a “game” consists of some goal the “players” are encouraged to achieve, and there are rules in place. Players start by learning the basics of the rules, then using those rules to reach the game’s objective.
A good game makes the person playing it feel clever when they succeed – hit that nice dopamine rush and build some excitement. This is the secret of why games work in education: this chemical reaction in the brain reinforces what worked, and helps students remember it later.
Okay, But What Makes A GOOD Educational Game?
People learn far more from their successes than their failures. A good game in education leverages that fact to hack the dopamine rush from games to crystalize important class concepts. This is the real tricky part for schools though; just because a game is FUN does not mean it is GOOD for use in the classroom.
Bind The Rules to Concepts
For a game to be effective in the classroom, the rules of the game need to be intricately wound around the important class concepts. This means that a student will not be able to understand what is happening in the game (let alone succeed) unless they have the class concepts mastered.
Here’s an example: “The Game of Life” by Hasbro is one of the most popular board games, and on paper it should cover most of the bases of what you want to talk about in a Personal Finance class. There are careers, retirement, family planning, cash transactions, and can be a lot of fun. But the Game of Life is really a poor game to use to actually teach personal finance concepts.
The actual gameplay does not require students to really know what is going on. Sure, they might have to make a payment towards a loan, but that does nothing to help understand how loans work (or when they are a good vs bad idea). Yes, there is money changing hands, but the winner is just who collects the most money by the end of the game. There is not really a “right” or “wrong” way to play, so students only get that sweet, sweet dopamine rush purely by chance, so nothing from the learning process is reinforced. This can be contrasted with PersonalFinanceLab’s Budget Game, where one of the key component’s of a student’s overall game score is their credit score. It is not possible for a student to improve that without fundamentally knowing what a credit score is, how their credit card works, and how to use it responsibly.
With that said, the Game of Life might be a good opportunity to add some financial terms into the vocabulary of kids, just not an effective tool to really teach financial literacy.
Have Many Opportunities For Small Wins
A good educational game makes sure students have a lot of “baby steps” from start to finish. Remember – the real crystallization of the knowledge we want students to walk away with happens when they use the rules of the game to have some success, so having many opportunities of small, meaningful wins along the way is crucial.
We can use the Game of Life as another example here. The totality of the player’s finishing position of the game is based on how much cash they have at the very end. The game is also set up to have plenty of events happen throughout the game that can instantly boost players who may be lagging or knock the current leader off the top spot. This is what makes the game more fun and exciting for students to play – if the winner was clear by the ½ way point, it becomes boring for the other players. But for use in education, it means there is no real small win – either they win it all, or they win nothing. Even the “positive” events in the game lose their potency when they can be erased by bad luck on the next spin of the wheel.
In our budgeting game, we take the opposite approach. The biggest component of the total score a student receives comes from setting and hitting savings goals every “month” of the game. Those points build up over the course of the game, and students maximize their monthly gain by following a basic “Pay Yourself First” mentality (save at least 10% of their total income). This gives an opportunity for a “small win” on a regular basis by putting into practice a core concept of what we are trying to teach.
Okay, so now we know what makes a game work for education. But what about time frame?
Short Term, or Mini-Games
Short games are the easiest to implement – usually taking one class period or less. We consider these to be “Mini-Games”. The most basic (and least fun) would be a pop quiz, but this can be a far more involved exercise. All of the games provided by NextGen Personal Finance’s Arcade fall into this category, and here at PersonalFinanceLab we have some of our own mini-games embedded into lessons in our curriculum library.
Short games can be very effective at highlighting one specific class concept and giving students a more memorable experience to help recall that concept later. But beware of short games with high ambitions – there is only so much that students can take away from a 20 minute activity.
Long-Term Games
Long-Term Games, by definition, cannot be completed in a single class period. We think of these games as an embedded part of the class itself, helping to underpin concepts by having students revisit over several weeks (or even months). Long-term games usually do require a class period to “launch”, but then students revisit on the side later throughout the class. These types of games work much better when the “rules” of the game are set up to really reflect what the student should be taking away from the core class concepts, and they can continue to improve their game performance by leveraging their better understanding of the “rules” as time goes on.
Short vs Long Term Games – An Example
In the NextGen Arcade I linked to earlier, one of their popular games is called Stax. Stax is an investing mini-game where students allocate money over a 20-year period across different types of investments. This is an educational game designed to be used as part of one class period during an Investments unit.
A student who plays the Stax game is going to be more likely to remember the difference between the rate of return of a bond and a stock index than a student who did not – a short, specific lesson that is easy to digest.
This contrasts with the PersonalFinanceLab Stock Game, which is a long-term game where students build their portfolio of real stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and more (depending on how a teacher sets up their class). This is designed for students to build and manage their portfolio over the course of several weeks, conduct research on their investments, and see how real-world news impacts their portfolio over time. By leveraging this long-term game, students not only learn about the difference between the security types, but will remember years from now the day when their portfolio suddenly spiked (or dropped) by 10%. Not only that, but they also have the opportunity to explore they “why” of how events in the real world intertwine to impact the health of their portfolio. Teachers can even set up their class to automatically deposit cash into student’s accounts every week that needs to be re-invested, like an accelerated version of building an IRA in the real world.
At PersonalFinanceLab, we advocate teachers use long-term games whenever possible – our recommended personal finance course outlines (available for 18-week semester, 9-week quarter, and 3-week enrichment classes) to leverage the repetition, small wins over a longer time, and constant reinforcement of core concepts. That does not mean teachers should avoid mini-games (they are absolutely fantastic resource), but leveraging the longer term whenever possible will get the best long-term impact for student outcomes.
Kevin Smith is the Director of Product Development for PersonalFinanceLab. He has an academic background in economics and game theory, with a Master’s of Economics from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, and a join Master of Public Policy and Administration / MBA from the Stuart School of Business in Chicago, Illinois.
This Fall, new and returning teachers can look forward to using their favorite LMS for registering their students to their PersonalFinanceLab class. You will need an active account to be able to take advantage of this new integration. However, once you have your site license, you can take advantage of single sign-on through platforms like Canvas, Schoology, Blackboard, Moodle or D2L.
The best part is that your students won’t have to remember an extra username and password! They can seamlessly get access to the Stock Game, Budget Game and our curriculum library through whatever interface they’re already familiar with.
How It Works
Our new integration utilizes LTI Deep Linking to connect your students’ account on your LMS system directly to PersonalFinanceLab.
What this means is that after the first configuration of the LMS with PersonalFinanceLab, teachers can add PersonalFinanceLab as a resource to their class. After setting your class rules, students can click to sign in directly from the LMS – and only from your LMS (to help with rostering support), with first-time sign-up under their “Assignments”.
This makes it faster, easier, and more secure to get your classes set up and students registered than ever!
Please note that students who register to PFinLab through our regular registration path can NOT enable single sign-on to their LMS account later. Students also MUST log into PersonalFinanceLab via your classroom portal, since their accounts will be permanently tied to your LMS. The first-time setup of our LMS integration with your school also may take some coordination with your IT department – please ask your account manager for details.
Clever Integration
Our full LMS integration will require some coordination with your school’s IT department to get up and running. For schools that already leverage Clever for single sign-on, you’re covered too!
To take advantage of Clever, first add PersonalFinanceLab as an App in Clever for your classroom (this will allow students to access PFinLab with their Clever account).
Next, create your class with your PersonalFinanceLab, and get your unique class invite link, and share this link with your students.
Finally, when students click the link to create their accounts, they will “Sign up with Clever” instead of entering their other registration to complete the connection:
Unlike the full LMS integration, students who register through any other method (for example, if you as the teacher generated logins for each student instead of sharing the class registration link) can connect to their Clever account at any time from the “Edit Profile” page.
This means if you are a returning teacher who uses Clever, you can connect your existing teacher account too!
Google Classroom
For schools that use Google Classroom, we have you covered too! Your students’ Google accounts can also be used for Single Sign-On, with the same steps as Clever. Students will just “Login With Google”, and they are good to go!
If you need any help getting started, please contact our Helpdesk or your dedicated account manager. We are here to help!
Hey teachers – we have a major update in store for you this Fall! From budget game graphics updates to currency trading and everything in between, this might be our biggest update ever!
Clever Integration
We are making it easier than ever to get students registered into your class! Starting this Fall, teachers can add PersonalFinanceLab as an “App” in Clever, and have students join directly to their class via their Clever accounts. It has never been so easy to roster your entire class!
Class Quick-Create
Speaking of fast and easy, we’ve made it faster and easier than ever to set up your PFinLab class too! One of the greatest parts of PFinLab is the ability to tailor your class exactly how you want, with over 200 settings between the budget game and stock game to choose from.
But sometimes you just want to set up with the recommended settings and go! And now you can! When teachers set up their classes for this Fall, they will have the option to use either an “Express” set-up (using our default settings, preferred by most teachers), or “Custom”, to tweak their session options to best suit their class.
LMS Single Sign-On
We weren’t done with just Clever for single-sign on either! This Fall will also see the launch of the PersonalFinanceLab Deep Linking functionality, which will allow single sign-on and rostering between PFinLab and Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, BrightSpace, and Sakai LMS systems!
Integrating these LMS systems is not quite as “turnkey” as Clever – schools who are interested in LMS integration will need to reach out to their Account Manager, as some configuration will be needed with your school’s IT department.
Budget Game – “My Apartment”
Our budgeting game is a fantastic resource for teaching students about cash management and budgeting, and this fall we’re launching a major update based on user feedback!
The current game is based on the student moving forward through time, but it can be too easy to forget some of the choices made in the past, or feel that some options have less impact. With this update, every student will have their own “Apartment”, which will fill over time with purchases based on the decisions they’ve made in the game. Students will also have the opportunity to save up for bigger purchases, like a vacation package or new TV, instead of waiting for events to pop up in the flow of normal gameplay.
Students will even be able to visit each other’s Apartments from the rankings page!
Of course this is a new threat to their monthly savings goals – making it an even better learning experience on how to prioritize and Pay Yourself First!
Assignment Statistics Reporting
Teachers that that PersonalFinanceLab’s built-in lessons, videos, and curriculum will notice a major improvement to our on-site reporting.
Our previous versions would simply report the grades and whether or not a student completed the tasks that they were assigned. This semester’s update gives a lot deeper dive, both for each student and for the entire class. New data points include:
The total time taken for each task you’ve assigned
The individual responses students made to each quiz question (and whether it was “correct” or “incorrect”)
If your class allows students to re-try the quizzes, you will also get a count of their number of attempts, and responses for each attempt
Class summaries for the average time all students have taken per task, and average grades on each quiz
Curriculum Unit Introductions and Assessments
This is another update for our Personal Finance professors! PersonalFinanceLab includes over 300 lessons to teach financial literacy concepts. To help break this up for students, we have added new Unit Introductions and Unit Assessments for each of our 5 major content areas (Budgeting, Investing, Insurance, Credit, and Financial Decision Making), with automatically graded assessments for each unit.
Using the introductions and unit assessments is, of course, optional – you can still mix and match lessons in any order to match your preferred course structure.
Improved Option Spread Margins and Trading
Classes that do a deep-dive into investing are in for a major update too! This Fall’s update also includes a major change to our option spread mechanics.
Our previous system only supported a limited number of options, with a trading interface that some students thought limited their trading ability (or worse, were not sure how to enter orders for certain types of spreads).
This semester’s update completely revamps the option spreads trading pit, and makes margin calculations consistent regardless of whether students trade one leg at a time, or together as a spread. Best of all, each spread type also includes a short description of how it works, and a payoff diagram showing students their profit and loss profile based on the spread they are attempting to place!
Multi-Legged Option Spreads
Our improvements to our existing option spreads was really just a lead-up to a major overhaul of the spreads system to include many more spread types. Students can now place 3- and 4-legged option spreads in a single order. So bring on the Butterflies and Condors – along with snippet descriptions and profit diagrams to help students get started!
Real-Time Forex Trading
We have supported forex trading using real-time prices to execute trades for many years, but due to restrictions from our data vendors, we could only display delayed prices.
However, starting this Fall, we have a new data vendor for our currency feeds, now allowing all users to see the real-time bid/ask prices right from the trading pit.
Messaging Center
The last major update for this Fall is our new messaging center, built right into the PFinLab platform. This new inbox system will alert students of splits, dividends, or other corporate actions that have impacted their account, give updates on any support tickets with questions, allow teachers to directly message their students (or even their entire class), and more!
This is especially helpful for schools using pre-generated accounts, or where students normally are not able to contact our support team by email – they will also get updates straight to their PFinLab inbox!
Our messaging center is designed to keep your students updated with their PFinLab class – this is a new enhancement to the Forum feature that has been part of the system for the last several years. Students will not be able to send messages to other students, or across classes.
And Much More!
There are also dozens of behind-the-scenes improvements to site performance, report exports, and tweaks to make PersonalFinanceLab a more valuable tool than ever for your classes. We are looking forward to serving your classes this Fall!
Don’t Have A License For Your School?
If your school does not yet have a site license for PFinLab, or if you need to renew your license for the new semester, feel free to fill out the form below and our account managers will be in touch soon!
This course outline is designed for condensed learning programs for financial literacy, usually taking place over the summer. Enrichment programs can vary in length, but our benchmark for pacing is a 3-week program that meets for approximately 2 hours a day, 5 days a week.
With student packets that can be easily shared with your students! And teacher grading rubrics too.
In the outline below, you will find a breakdown of activities for each day, along with the approximate time commitment. Many activities can be used either as a lecture/presentation/class discussion (and include a slide deck to get started), or as individual activities with an online lesson and associated pop quiz.
All materials can be utilized both in person or online to suit a variety of blended or remote learning experiences.
Notice for teachers joining our Free Financial Literacy Events – Our free events do not have full admin access for teachers – all settings are enabled with our recommended settings. You can skip our guides on course set-up and dive straight into the Unit Outlines and Teacher Packets!
General Course Structure
The course is divided into 5 units on a different aspect of financial literacy, largely aligned to the Jumpstart™ national standards.:
Investing
Budgeting
Credit and Debt
Careers and Income
Risk and Insurance
The course begins with a pre-test assessment to measure student baseline understanding, before beginning each of the sub-units. Each day of the course starts with a recap of the previous day, with additional challenge questions to foster discussion and solidify learning. At the conclusion of each sub-unit, there are short assessments to measure understanding before continuing on.
Buffer time is built into the course outline to allow flexibility for students with different learning needs, with time set aside each day to progress through the PersonalFinanceLab™ budget and stock games for a complete experiential learning experience. The course concludes both with a summary of experiences from both games, and a post-test to measure outcomes compared to the pre-test at the start of the course.
What Is Different from The Longer Course Outlines?
This course outline is a condensed form of our other course outlines designed for quarter- or semester- long classes. Due to the condensed nature of enrichment programs, the overall content is roughly the same load as our 9-week course outline, but with additional time spent on in-class activities, videos, and discussion points.
In terms of course content, ordering, and pacing, the biggest change is that our Investing unit is moved to the front of the course. This is because giving students a hands-on component with the PersonalFinanceLab™ stock game is a cornerstone of our investment learning experience, and it is important to have as long of a trading period as possible to allow students to have the maximum exposure to how events in the real world can impact their portfolio.
In a typical 9- or 18- week course, we also recommend teachers close their class stock game before the end of the class so students can prepare final reports and presentations. In our enrichment program outlines, we recommend teachers extend the stock game beyond the end of the program, giving students the opportunity to continue to watch their portfolio grow (and practice investing strategies and research themselves) beyond the end of the course.
PersonalFinanceLab is highly customizable for your class. However, to make the most of our recommended projects, we encourage teachers to use the following settings when setting up their class (these settings are specific to this 9-week course outline):
Budget Game
Set up a 12-month game, where students are “Part Time” for the first 6 months, “Full Time” for the last 6 months (we include a “midpoint review” project that hinges on this transition). Budgeting starts in the 2nd unit of the game, and the course outline sets aside time to complete up to 12 months over the course of the enrichment program.
Do NOT enable speed limits for your session. As the course session is quite short, speed limits would interfere with the daily course progression.
You can use our pre-sets for bill expenses or choose settings more directly related to your area. However, confirm at the preview at the bottom of the screen that students should be able to save 10% of their income each month.
Stock Game
Create your stock game by giving students $10,000 of initial cash.
After your class has been set up and students have registered, utilize our Teams feature to organize your class into groups of 2 or more students per team. This will allow students to place their own trades, while aggregating team portfolios.
Our last recommended activity for the class involves each group making a 5-minute presentation to the class, and so we recommend you adjust your group sizes accordingly to allow all groups present in the same day at the end of class.
Your Assignments
Each unit outline has our recommended assignment tasks. The class begins with a pre-test and ends with a post-test, and the course outline specifies our recommended assigned tasks for each day.
Instead of having a single assignment for each day, we recommend grouping each of the 5 units in to their own “Assignment”, which students will complete over the course of 2-3 days (and give students who need more time a chance to catch up). You can find out more about creating assignments at our admin guide here.
Getting Help
If you have any questions about setting up your enrichment session, or would like a walkthrough on the specific needs for your school or program, you can connect with our account management team using the “Live Chat” on this page, or emailing info@personalfinancelab.com for more information.
We are looking forward to working with you soon!
Pricing
Depending on your class size, we have discounts available for summer enrichment programs! Please leave your details below to hear from our sales team:
After logging in, you will be brought to the page you see below, the Student Dashboard, where your portfolio in the Stock Game, your progress in the Budget Game, and your assignments are available. Other useful widgets are “My Watchlist” which you can edit to track particular stocks or ETF’s.
How to Play the Stock Game
To access the trading pit, you can select “Stocks” from the dropdown menu under “Stock Game” on the main menu. Alternatively, if your class has more securities available you can choose whichever one from the list. Your teacher may have included bonds and/or mutual funds as well.
If you’re in a more advanced class, you will also have other security types available like options, futures or forex. For a tutorial on how to trade all the available security types in your class, please go to the Video Library.
Click the link above to open the stock trading page, you should see a page appear like the one below.
If you have no idea what to invest in first, you can always invest in what you know. Here are some questions to help you get started.
Where do you shop for clothes or accessories?
Where do you or your family shop for groceries or other household items?
What are the brand names of products in your kitchen, bathroom or closet?
The more questions you ask like these, the more you realize how interconnected the stock market is with your day-to-day life. You could also look up the names of the production companies that make your favorite movies, video games, the apps you use the most, or anything else you can think of.
Symbol Lookup
Once you have a list of companies, it’s time to check what their ticker symbol is. Your teacher may have included the following lessons as part of your class assignments. The two lessons take about 10 minutes to complete altogether, and will give you a basic knowledge about stocks and ticker symbols.
Whenever you’re ready, head over to the Symbol Lookup page. You can find it from under the “Investing Research” tab on the main menu. From this page, you can do a deep dive on the company’s financial situation, get a detailed stock quote, see company news and much more.
Start by typing the name of the company in the search box, in this example, Spotify. A list will appear below of all the relevant ticker symbols based on which exchange it’s listed in. You want to select the basic ticker symbol, in this case, SPOT.
If you want to learn more about stock exchanges, this 5 minute article goes over the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE). It will explain the basics of how a stock market works.
Once you’ve selected the ticker symbol from the dropdown menu, all the buttons in the left side panel will provide more information about that company. For instance, if you click “Analyst Rating” your screen will show you whether the company you selected is considered a good investment by financial professionals.
All the other buttons are equally useful to help inform your decision to invest in the company or not. You can see the company’s financial statements that were filed with the SEC, company news, price history, charting tools and more.
When you’re ready to place an order, click the “Trade” button beside the search bar, you will be taken back to the trading pit with the ticker symbol pre-selected for you.
How to Place a Trade
Exchange: By default, the U.S. Stock Exchange is selected from the North American region. You can choose another one by changing the region from the dropdown menu, (if your teacher has enabled international exchanges).
Action: Choose between Buy, Sell, Short and Cover. Your class may not have Shorting enabled, in that case you can choose either Buy or Sell as an action.
Symbol: Enter the ticker symbol you want to trade. If you don’t know the symbol, you can use the Symbol Lookup page. This is available from under the Investment Research tab on the main menu.
Quantity: The amount must always be whole numbers, you cannot enter a fraction or decimal.
Order Type: The default “Market Order” is pre-selected for you, and will execute immediately while the market is open at the current market price. If you want to place a trade at a specific price, you can use the other order types, (Limit Orders, Stop Orders, Trailing Stop $ or Trailing Stop %). To learn more about how to use the different options, watch our tutorial video, Order Types.
Charts: Use the simple or advanced charting feature to see the price fluctuations over time. Once you’ve entered the ticker symbol, additional company information will populate below the trading window. This will provide the same information that’s available on the Quotes page for that company.
Preview: When you are done entering the trading settings, click “Preview” to see the total cost with commission included. If you like the price, you’ll be prompted to enter a trading note and to click “confirm” to execute your order.
After you click “Preview” you will see an image like what you see above. Your class might have Trade Notes required, however, it’s a good habit to add a note anyway. This will help you remember why you placed each trade at the end of your class when it comes time to prepare any reports or assignments on your performance in the Stock Game.
Open Positions
You can review your current holdings at any time by going to the Open Positions page, available from under the Stock Game tab on the main menu. For more information about each holding, click the “+” button. Whenever you want to close out your position, you can click the “Trade” button and you’ll be taken back to the trading page.
Please note that the Market Value will say “delayed” for the first 15 minutes after a trade is placed. However, the trading simulation is still using real-time data for the US stock exchange while the market is open.
My Rankings
One of the most popular pages on the site is the My Rankings page, available from under the Stock Game tab on the main menu. This is where you can see how your portfolio is performing compared to other students in your class.
How to Play the Budget Game
You can access the Budget Game by clicking the “Play Budget Game” button on the Budget Game dropdown menu, or with this link Budget Game Page. From the Budget Game menu you will also be able to access your class rankings, your account statements and useful videos to help you get started. The slideshow above will walk you through the main features of the game and how to navigate through each month.
Tutorial Videos
My Statements
As you progress through the Budget Game, you’ll be able to access your checking account, saving account and credit card statements just like a real bank account. All statements can be exported to excel, which will be useful if ever your class has any projects on your cashflow or choices you made in the game.
This page is available from under the Budget Game tab on the main menu, or this handy link Budget Report.
Assignments
There are many different places you can access your assignments, like from the Student Dashboard, the Open Positions page, and the Budget Game page.
You can see all your lessons from the “View Active Assignments” page under the Learning tab. From here you can see your grades and what you still have left to do.
When you click on “View” it will open the lesson. Each lesson includes videos, text and other interactive elements, like you can you can see below, “What is a Stock?”
Each lesson ends with a pop quiz that will provide you a grade when you click “Submit”.
Help Desk
If you need any assistance along the way, please use the “Contact Support” button that is available from all pages in the bottom right corner. During business hours, (9:30AM to 5:30PM EST) we have live chat, and outside these times you can send in a ticket and our team will answer you as soon as possible the following business day.
PersonalFinanceLab.com is used by nearly 1,000 teachers each year and we love getting to know each and every one of them! Everyday we are impressed by their dedication and the many unique and innovative ways to teach students about Personal Finance. Today we celebrate one of our many outstanding educators — Terry Ley, a high school Personal Finance, Accounting, Microsoft Applications, and Web Design teacher.
Hello! My name is Terry Ley, and I’ve been teaching at Bothell Highschool since 2006. We are located in the great state of Washington. I currently teach Personal Finance, Accounting, Microsoft Application, and Web design for grades 9-12.
How do you incorporate PersonalFinanceLab into your unique cirriculum?
Ley: “It’s [PersonalFinanceLab] definitely planned into the curriculum. [..] Once we finish my budgeting unit, then we play [The Budget Game]. And they [students] play that for two months.
I’ve created a worksheet that goes with it. And they have to answer questions along the way. It includes challenges they’ve had, things that went well, what they would do differently the next time they play, and then life lessons that they’ve learned. Then we will play again, later in the semester, as we learn more about credit cards and all that.
I also just introduced the stock market game. In my class, we just learned about stocks. Today, I’m finishing up teaching them about mutual funds. And so this week, in the stock market game, they have to buy two stocks and one mutual fund. And I require that they spend about $10,000, every week on three different stocks or stocks and mutual funds. So that way, they’re always researching and always trying to discover new, hot stocks that they think will do well.”
How do you make teaching financial literacy relevant to students’ lives today?
Ley: “I work really hard to make my class very real life and very relevant. I love the budget game, because it’s the unexpected expenses [that] come up, and they have to deal with them. And, you know, some kids complain, ‘I had three flat tires last week or two speeding tickets,’ and they’re frustrated with that. But you know, I’d say, Well, does that ever happen? And then, they have got to find a way to deal with it. But yes, I try to incorporate as much real life into my classes as I can.”
How do you grade students on their use of the Budget Game?
Ley: “I do not grade on performance of their investments, I just grade that they have purchased three brand new stocks. Every student has a a paper copy of a portfolio and they have to fill out the portfolio. They have to go get all the information, like earnings per share, PE ratio, earnings growth, PEG ratio, large cap/small cap, what is the value of that, the 52 week range, the beta number. I want them to actually have to do some research. And I’ve have guest speakers come in and talk about what type of beta number to look for? What beta number are they looking for? What’s a good PE ratio? That type of thing. And so they have some guidelines, and hopefully those guidelines from our guess speakers guide them as they make their choices.”
What do you love most about PersonalFinanceLab?
Ley: “I love PersonalFinanceLab, because it has the two parts to it — the Budget Game and the Stock Market Game. The Budget Game is super engaging for the students. And it’s fun to sit back once they’re into it. And the students start talking and chatting with, you know, their neighbors about the good things going on, or the frustrating things going on. And what I love, particularly about the Budget Game, is that it incorporates their credit score and lifestyle, that type of thing. They have to think about the ramifications of partying too much on the weekend, or studying too much and not doing other things, or if they don’t work. And so it incorporates a lot of extra things that they need to really think about and not just doing one thing and trying to get a high score. So it’s a great fit into a classroom […] overall, it’s a great, great addition to my class.”
Helping students reach a deeper level of financial literacy is our goal at PersonalFinanceLab, and it wouldn’t be possible without teachers like Terry Ley and teachers like you!
Click the button below to discover more about our Budget Game, Stock Game and Curriculum. If you would like to join one of our webinars, check our calendar by clicking the button below.
PersonalFinanceLab.com is used by nearly 1,000 teachers each year. In our conversations with many of them throughout the year, we are constantly impressed by their dedication and the many unique and innovative ways to teach students about Personal Finance. Today we celebrate one of our many outstanding teachers. Robert Fredette, a 10th grade Financial Independence teacher.
Hello! My name is Robert Fredette, and I’ve been teaching for 13 years. I work at Lamo Union High School, Hyde Park, Vermont. I currently teach Financial Independence, Accounting, and Entrepreneurship for grades 10-12.
How do you incorporate PersonalFinanceLab into your unique teaching style?
Fredette: “We use it [PersonalFinanceLab] as a primary tool, I use it […] like an evaluation tool of what we’ve talked about all year long. We set the game up right at the end of the semester. And I usually run it for about 18 months or so. I do like three months of being a student in the game, and then they move to being a full time worker. And I also look at […] where we’re at in the economy, what hourly wages seem like, I go through what rents look like, and try to mirror, at least a little bit of what might be really out there. So we’re not taking a test […] what we’re doing is, we’re experiencing this game. And now the students are explaining the different concepts of money– and what we’ve talked about– and how they’re applying it in the game, what’s happening in the game, and how they’re feeling about the learning process of the game.”
How do you make teaching financial literacy relevant to students’ lives today?
Fredette: “I think the ‘relevance’ part of teaching is really where we connect with kids. For me, it started with doing some simulations with financial independence. And that was good. But it wasn’t the Budget Game. We were able to talk about events that happened in the game. And the online part of our school just went from me teaching, or trying to teach a PowerPoint slide to them interacting with a game, having an experience, and then being able to reflect on it, relate with it, and then communicate and talk about it as a group. And kids had similar experiences sometimes or different ones, and so that they were all able to share. And so it really made our online time really, really, so much better.”
How do you grade students on their use of the Budget Game?
Fredette: “At the end [of the semester], they write a paper that addresses things like, ‘what ways do you think differently about how to manage your finances?’ So things like personal decision making, earning and reporting income, budgeting and savings. And they have to write a summary paper about how they felt after they played the game and took the class.”
What is your favourite thing about PersonalFinanceLab?
Fredette: “As I was reading some of these [student reports], […] there are so many times as a teacher, I could stand up and talk about budgeting and save this for that, and don’t spend here […] and you know, what really connected with them is this game, this game made that connection more relevant and deeper than me just explaining that to them. […] This has changed their thought process. And that’s what I kind of look at when I read their summaries.”
Helping students reach a deeper level of financial literacy is our goal at PersonalFinanceLab, and it wouldn’t be possible without teachers like Robert Fredette and teachers like you! Click the button below to discover more about our Budget Game, Stock Game and Curriculum. If you would like to join one of our webinars, check our calendar by clicking the button below.
Our 18-Week Financial Literacy / Personal Finance Course Outline
This recommended financial literacy course outline is designed for those who teach a 18-week Financial Literacy Course (aka Personal Finance Class). It makes heavy use of PersonalFinanceLab’s financial literacy games, budget game and stock games, as well as our financial literacy curriculum library and assessments to measure student progress.
Notice for teachers joining our Free Financial Literacy Events – Our free events do not have full admin access for teachers – all settings are enabled with our recommended settings. You can skip our guides on course set-up and dive straight into the Unit Outlines and Teacher Packets!
To maximize impact of each lesson, classes make heavy use of our budgeting and stock games. We introduce these concepts early so students can continue to practice and build understanding as a course-long project even as the main teaching focus continues on to other topics.
Each unit is divided into several sub-units, each of which would take a typical class approximately 45 minutes to complete, including class discussion time. Each unit contains a mix of class discussion points, Assignments from PersonalFinanceLab’s curriculum and assessment library, class projects, and potential homework lessons. We’ve also included some activities, videos and course packs from other personal finance curriculum experts
We include a time estimate for each activity to allow teachers to easily replace any of our recommended lessons with their own projects.
What’s Inside
Each of the Units below contains an overview of the unit’s objectives and glossary terms, along with a PowerPoint Presentation for each unit (with glossary introductions and definitions to help facilitate class discussion). Many of the individual lessons also have an accompanying Google Slides presentation, which teachers can use in place of our online lessons. Each Unit has a Google Docs overview that you can copy, plus additional Teacher and Student packets with individual project prompts and grading rubrics.
Setting Up Your Class
PersonalFinanceLab is highly customizable for your class. However, to make the most of our recommended projects, we encourage teachers to use the following settings when setting up their class (these settings are specific to this 18-week course outline):
Budget Game
Set up a 18-month game, where students are “Part Time” for the first 12 months, “Full Time” for the last 6 months (we include a “midpoint review” project that hinges on this transition).
Utilize Speed Limits, allowing students to complete no more than 2 months of the budget game per 1-week of class time.
You can use our pre-sets for bill expenses or choose settings more directly related to your area. However, confirm at the preview at the bottom of the screen that students should be able to save 10% of their income each month.
Stock Game
Create your stock game by giving students $10,000 of initial cash.
Also enable $1,000 weekly deposits. This will add additional cash to student’s accounts each week of class (as if they were making regular contributions to a retirement account that must be re-invested).
After your class has been set up and students have registered, utilize our Teams feature to organize your class into groups of 2 or more students per team. This will allow students to place their own trades, while aggregating team portfolios.
Our last recommended activity for the class involves each group making a 5-minute presentation to the class, and so we recommend you adjust your group sizes accordingly to allow all groups present in the same day at the end of class.
Your Assignments
Each unit outline has our recommended assignment tasks. Most teachers load these as Weekly Assignments for their class. We generally recommend teachers utilize the Rewards function to alternatingly award bonus cash to student’s budget game or stock game accounts throughout the class to encourage on-time submissions. Also, you can set-up pre and post tests from the Create Assignment page to gauge how much your students are learning about financial literacy and personal finance. Set-up the pre-test before students use the platform, and the post-test at the end of the semester.
Are you looking for interactive resources to bring personal finance concepts to life?
PersonalFinanceLab has all the resources you need in one online platform that is ideal for K12 classrooms. To see how you can use this in your class, join the webinar that best suits your schedule.
Our regional account managers are here to help YOU design the most engaging class activities and lessons.
Get to Know Your Regional Account Manager
Alyssa Adkins
Serves: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Montana, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming and International schools
Hi! From Oklahoma, my name is Alyssa and I am a former High School Business and Computer Applications Teacher. I’ve taught Personal Finance, Accounting, Digital Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Business Computer Applications I & II and more! I’m also an Entrepreneur with over 12 years experience in B2B Marketing. I love connecting with Teachers and strategizing how they can incorporate Personal Finance Lab into the classroom and curriculum!
Serves: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington DC, Wisconsin
Serves (Canada): English and French
I’m Heloise, I’m an Account Manager and I help teachers get set up on PersonalFinanceLab and make the most out of our resources. I accompany teachers from onboarding, guide them and help them discover our platform and answer their questions throughout the year. Contact me if you’d like to find out more about what we do!
Serves: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia
Hi! I’m Eric, I’m an Account Manager and I help provide personal finance solutions for your school district. I enjoy meeting with district leaders and walking them through our products and how to best implement them. I am passionate about bringing finance tools into the classroom, knowing the impact that would have had on me as a young student. In my spare time, I manage my own personal investment portfolio and specialize in crypto trading. I have been partnering with educators for the past six years working with the western and central states. I am looking forward to partnering with you in the future. Feel free to contact me if we seem like a good fit for you!
There are a lot of new enhancements that will improve how both teachers and students use PersonalFinanceLab!
Spring 2022 Key Updates
Dozens of new graphics for event cards
Lesson Cards have been improved with multiple-choice quizzes
Personal Finance curriculum has new sub-units based on the Jumpstart/Council for Economic Education standards. Each sub-unit has a short introduction and short unit review quiz.
Instructors can view the individual quiz responses from each student to see where they got questions right and or wrong, along with the time taken to complete each lesson and quiz.
Professors will have summary reports for their class showing the average time to complete each lesson and quiz for the entire class, along with statistics on the right/wrong averages for the class on every quiz question.
New Graphics
Our design team has been hard at work to bring more gamified elements to the pop-up choice and event cards in the Budget Game. As students play, they encounter some choice cards that ask them to spend money with either their debit or credit cards. Giving them the opportunity to practice using a credit card before they may have received one in real-life.
Other choice cards ask students to decide if they want to purchase or participate in an activity at all. All these choices they make have consequences. The latest enhancement will tie in similar graphics across cards to thematically represent how choosing one option over another has long-term consequences.
Pop-Up Lessons
In response to requests from teachers, we’ve changed how students enter their answers into the pop-up lessons in the Budget Game. Before it was an open text field, and often students were getting stuck and couldn’t move forward. Now we will have a dropdown multiple choice list so students can still test their knowledge, but can quickly and easily keep playing after completing a lesson.
Assignment Sub-Units
With over 300+ lessons, it can be difficult to know where to start; this enhancement will group our personal finance lessons according to Jump$tart standards. Not only does it make it easy to identify the lessons that reinforce knowledge statements like budgeting, credit, financial risk and decision making etc. but it allows teachers to quickly assign a whole sub-unit at a time.
By adding an introduction and exit quiz, you can be reassured that your student will be prepared for the lessons, and will be assessed on their knowledge at the end.
Student Progress & Assessments
Teacher reports just got a whole lot more useful by allowing you to see EXACTLY which questions your students are getting right or wrong. You will be able to see trends, and cover the concepts in more depth that students are struggling with. Similarly, you will know what has been firmly understood so you can safely move on to new material!
On top of what students got right or wrong, you will be able to see how much time it took to complete the quizzes. This is a great way to know which students are not being challenged enough, or who is struggling. Over time, you will see what topics your students need more time with so you can allocate class time accordingly.
Offering your students four exciting and fun features:
A Personal Budget Game
A Stock Game
Built-in Lessons with Pop Quizzes
National Challenge with the opportunity to win prizes
5 great reasons to invite your students to the challenge!
Your students will gain valuable experience by building a monthly budget
They will learn how to manage their checking and savings accounts, credit cards, and stock portfolios
Your students will practice what you learn in class before using their real money
It’s free, and it’s super fun – they can compete with their colleagues and practice your knowledge in an interactive game!
10 Teachers will Receive a $100 Staples Gift Card!*
*The 10 teachers that have the most students completing at least 6 months of the budget game will each receive a $100 Staples e-gift Card. That’s another $5000 in prizes for teachers.
Dates: Registration is now open. Challenge runs from October 10th to November 18th, 2022.
Prizes: The Top 10 students from each contest, (from the Budget Game and Stock Game) win a $100 Amazon gift card for their classroom. Teachers of the top-performing finalists will be notified the week after the challenge ends. Teachers will decide how the prizes will be spent for their class. PLUS 10 Teachers will Receive a $100 Staples Gift Card, (please see above).
How Your Students Can Join The Challenge
Your students will be able to register themselves via a pop-up message when they log into PersonalFinanceLab from now through the end of the competition.
You can also invite students from other classes who are not already using PersonalFinanceLab! For these students, you will need to register a separate teacher account (see link below), and will be able to generate logins for the additional students. These extra students will NOT count towards your school’s site license.
We will also send a trophy to the top-performing school in the Stock and Budget Games!
How does it work? Your students must complete 12 virtual months of our Personal Budgeting Game, and build a diversified portfolio of stocks, ETFs, bonds, and mutual funds to be eligible for prizes.
They can earn a certificate in Personal Finance by completing all the included lessons as well – this certification will look amazing in their curriculum in the future!
Do you already have a site license with Personal Finance Lab?
If your students are already using PfinLab this semester, they will see an invitation to join the challenge when they login. You won’t have to do anything on your part!
If other teachers at your school want to include their class in the Financial Literacy challenge, you can use the link below to register as a new teacher. Please note, this will not be tied at all to your existing account or site license!
Dates: Registration is now open. Challenge runs from March 28th to April 29th, 2022.
Prizes: The Top 10 students from each contest, (from the Budget Game and Stock Game) win a $100 Amazon gift card for their classroom. Teachers of the top-performing finalists will be notified the week after the challenge ends. Teachers will decide how the prizes will be spent for their class.
We will also send a trophy to the top-performing school in the Stock Game!
How does it work? You must complete 12 virtual months of our Personal Budgeting Game, and build a diversified portfolio of stocks, ETFs, bonds, and mutual funds to be eligible for prizes.
You can earn a certificate in Personal Finance by completing all the included lessons as well – this certification will look amazing in your curriculum in the future!
Register yourself for our FREE Spring 2022 Financial Literacy Challenge!
Customize the exchanges and securities to suit the level of difficulty for your students. We have loads of tutorial videos on researching and understanding the different types of markets. We also have live data and quoting tools to allow students to perform all their research before investing in our site. ➔ Learn more
How to Use the Stock Game?
If you are not sure how to use our stock game, click the button below!
The curriculum and assignments: choose from investing, personal finance, economics, accounting, marketing, management and more. All grades and progress are exportable into convenient reports to integrate with your other lesson plans. ➔ Learn more
6 Subjects, One Tool
In addition to Personal Finance lessons, PersonalFinanceLab.com also includes dozens of integrated activities for economics, accounting, investments, marketing, and management classes!
Personal Budgeting Game is set up as a calendar. Students experience managing their own bills, fixed and variable expenses and meeting their savings goals as either a full-time student with a part-time job or a full-time professional. Pop-up lessons integrate core lessons like “Needs vs Wants” or “Credit Cards.” Each month of gameplay takes 20 minutes. However, student progress is saved so this is an excellent bell ringer! ➔ Learn more
How to Use the Budget Game?
If you are not sure how to use our budget game, click the button below!
This course outline is designed for a 9-week Personal Finance Class. It makes heavy use of PersonalFinanceLab’s budget and stock games, as well as our curriculum library and assessments to measure student progress.
Notice for teachers joining our Free Financial Literacy Events – Our free events do not have full admin access for teachers – all settings are enabled with our recommended settings. You can skip our guides on course set-up and dive straight into the Unit Outlines and Teacher Packets!
To maximize impact of each lesson, classes make heavy use of our budgeting and stock games. We introduce these concepts early so students can continue to practice and build understanding as a course-long project even as the main teaching focus continues on to other topics.
Each unit is divided into several sub-units, each of which would take a typical class approximately 45 minutes to complete, including class discussion time. Each unit contains a mix of class discussion points, Assignments from PersonalFinanceLab’s curriculum and assessment library, class projects, and potential homework lessons.
We include a time estimate for each activity to allow teachers to easily replace any of our recommended lessons with their own projects.
What’s Inside
Each of the Units below contains an overview of the unit’s objectives and glossary terms, along with a PowerPoint presentation for each unit (with glossary introductions and definitions to help facilitate class discussion). Many of the individual lessons also have an accompanying Powerpoint presentation, which teachers can use in place of our online lessons. Each Unit has a PDF Course Outline overview that you can copy, plus additional Teacher and Student packets with individual project prompts and grading rubrics.
There are also several “In-Class Projects” throughout the course outline. More details on each project, including grading rubric templates, can be found in our Teacher Packet. There is also a separate Student Packet for students with prompts for each project.
PersonalFinanceLab is highly customizable for your class. However, to make the most of our recommended projects, we encourage teachers to use the following settings when setting up their class (these settings are specific to this 9-week course outline):
Budget Game
Set up a 12-month game, where students are “Part Time” for the first 6 months, “Full Time” for the last 6 months (we include a “midpoint review” project that hinges on this transition).
Utilize Speed Limits, allowing students to complete no more than 2 months of the budget game per 1-week of class time.
You can use our pre-sets for bill expenses or choose settings more directly related to your area. However, confirm at the preview at the bottom of the screen that students should be able to save 10% of their income each month.
Stock Game
Create your stock game by giving students $10,000 of initial cash.
Also enable $1,000 weekly deposits. This will add additional cash to student’s accounts each week of class (as if they were making regular contributions to a retirement account that must be re-invested).
After your class has been set up and students have registered, utilize our Teams feature to organize your class into groups of 2 or more students per team. This will allow students to place their own trades, while aggregating team portfolios.
Our last recommended activity for the class involves each group making a 5-minute presentation to the class, and so we recommend you adjust your group sizes accordingly to allow all groups present in the same day at the end of class.
Your Assignments
Each unit outline has our recommended assignment tasks. Most teachers load these as Weekly Assignments for their class. We generally recommend teachers utilize the Rewards function to alternatingly award bonus cash to student’s budget game or stock game accounts throughout the class to encourage on-time submissions. Also, you can set-up pre and post tests from the Create Assignment page to gauge how much your students are learning about financial literacy and personal finance. Set-up the pre-test before students use the platform, and the post-test at the end of the semester.
We would love the input of every teacher on our course outlines. They undergo constant revision to reflect new lessons and features on PersonalFinanceLab, with each update based in feedback from teachers like you. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a message below:
Our team has been busy this summer rolling out improvements to make teaching financial literacy and personal finance that much easier. Check out all the new features that will be available for this fall semester.
Budget Game
Improved Bank and Credit Card Statements – student’s checking account, savings account, and credit card statements are new and improved to look like real online banking sites. You can see them yourself here!
Summary Statements – brings all the relevant details for each student’s activities while on the site in one place for a birds-eye view of their financial health.
Full-Time Mode Changes – the Budget Game has two game modes – a student with a part-time job, or a full-time worker who just started their first job. Both versions have a multitude of minor improvements, but the biggest difference is that paychecks are only distributed once every two weeks instead of weekly for full-time mode.
Better Graphics
Our graphic design team has been hard at work as well, adding new illustrations and graphics throughout the game to bring each scenario to life. Check out a sneak preview from the gallery below.
Advanced Assignment Tracking
Time Tracking –you will now have the estimated time of completion for each lesson that you assign your students. This will give you a clear picture on how much time it will take to complete their work. We also are adding time tracking to each lesson, so you can see how much time each student in your class takes to finish each lesson and its accompanying assessment.
Grade Tracking – previously our system would track the score students received on each assessment, but not their answers to each individual question. This update will give you question-level insights for each student. If you allow students to re-take the assessments associated with each lesson, you can see their answers from each attempt.
Class Summary Statistics – this adds new class summary reporting, so you can see how long the average student in your class takes to complete each lesson, along with summary statistics on which individual questions in our assessments are frequently missed.
New Student Dashboard
We brought the student’s progress on your class Assignments front and center, so students are immediately greeted with what they need to focus on first. If your class is utilizing our Budgeting Game, their current game progress comes up with a button to continue from where they left off. They’ll also see their open positions and a snapshot of their portfolio. If your class is not utilizing the budget game or assignments, this will appear right on top.
The new dashboard is the featured image for this post!
Financial Literacy Lesson Update
Investing101 Update
Our Investing 101 curriculum is a great refresher for students on the fundamentals of investing as well as an essential component to department-wide or campus-wide investing competitions to help promote financial literacy. Our 10-chapter, 100-lesson course has undergone a comprehensive overhaul in light of changing trends in the investing world since its first launch. Highlights to the update include:
More and improved short video tutorials
Enhanced introductions to each covered security type, what they fundamentally represent, and how they can be combined for specific investing objectives
Complete revision of our chapters on Fundamental and Technical Analysis
Both new and improved tutorials on utilizing stock screeners and making your first trade
Improved focus on personal investing, including a discussion of tax advantages of “Buy and Hold” investing
Revamped chapter on Current Hot Topics in Trading, including lessons on cryptocurrencies, short squeezes, and ESG investing
Each chapter of Investing101 now includes two separate assessments – a short vocabulary quiz followed by a longer quiz on the substance of the chapter.
Financial Literacy Update
Our Financial Literacy lesson library has also received a major update. In addition to bringing our taxation lessons up-to-date with current tax policy and dozens of updates to our existing lessons, many new lessons have also been added. These include:
Unit introduction on taxation
Career development and the impact of different types of education
Charities and including giving in a spending plan
Simple and living wills
Understanding apartment rental agreements and obligations
Employer and employee rights and responsibilities
Using spreadsheets to compare loan terms to see which is a better deal
As with all of our lessons, each of our new lessons is bite-sized to take students 10 minutes or less, with an automatic assessment to check for understanding.
Our financial literacy lessons are perfect for Personal Finance classes utilizing both our portfolio simulation and personal budgeting game, or an excellent supplement to any business or finance class to ensure your students have exposure to the essential skills they need after graduation.
Coming Soon…
Course outlines on budgeting, investing, credit and other financial literacy topics to make it that much easier to integrate our platform into your curriculum. Once all the materials have been prepared, we’ll have a separate announcement to help explain to teachers how they can integrate this in their classes.
Many CTE programs across the country already use PersonalFinanceLab!
Find out what you and your students are missing!
Research shows the students learn more by doing than by listening. And at PersonalFinanceLab.com, we totally believe that!
Our simulations let your students “DO” Personal Finance so that they will remember it. Perhaps more than any other skill, learning to manage your money is a lesson that will truly last a lifetime.
PersonalFinanceLab offers 4 tools in 1 site to help YOU teach and to make sure your students LEARN.
With one easy to use site, your students will:
Play 12 virtual months of our Personal Budgeting Game, so they get to experience building a monthly budget and managing their monthly cash inflows, outflows, net worth, credit score, etc.
Experience the ups and downs of the stock market as they build a virtual stock portfolio
Supplement their knowledge with the embedded curriculum that teaches practical money skills, and…
This is a teacher introduction to the PersonalFinanceLab platform, with an overview of our budget game, stock game, curriculum library, gamification engine, and assessments.
Discover why the Budget Game, Stock Game and our Learning Library of assignments and lesson plans will transform how you teach financial literacy. And make teaching more fun, curriculum planning easy, and improve student engagement!
• Teachers can customize the types of securities students can trade, the diversification, and amount of trades per day. The stock game provides integrated research and reports so students can make smarter investment choices. Great for distance learning, and engaging students through healthy competition and portfolio rankings.
Completely Customizable
Our stock game can be perfectly tailored for your class. Choose your own class contest length and dates, what students can trade (stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, bonds, commodities – even cryptocurrencies!), how students need to diversify, and over 50 different settings!
You can even require students to take notes with every trade to connect the stock game back to your current course topics, use the built-in forums to drive class discussion, and post messages and alerts for your class!
This makes our stock game the perfect centerpiece for any personal finance, economics, business, entrepreneurship, or accounting class – you pick whatever rules work best for your set of students!
Integrated Research and Reports
Income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, historical prices, accounting ratios, SEC filings, option chains, and over 40 other data points are available in our Research Center. We even integrated company info, analyst ratings, symbol lookup, and charting tools directly into the trading page, so students can do all their investing research all in one place.
Teachers also get access to an unprecedented level of reporting and tracking, with real-time activity reports, diversification reports, trading activity, class summary data, and much more. Best of all, it is completely exportable to Excel or any other spreadsheet program!
Great for group work and homework!
Our Teams feature lets you group students into collaborative portfolios, so you can both see each student’s individual actions while keeping team class rankings as a group project!
Since PersonalFinanceLab.com is entirely web-based with no software to install, students can also track their portfolios from at home or even between classes on any mobile device for the ultimate gamified investing activity.
How to Use the Stock Game?
If you are not sure how to use our stock game, click the button below!
• Students learn how to build an emergency savings fund while balancing their monthly expenses. The game is set-up like a calendar and each “month” of gameplay takes 20 minutes to complete.
• Students make impactful decisions that change the opportunities they face in the game. These choices also affect their Net Worth, Credit Score, and Quality of Life Score. As they play the Budget Game they complete integrated lessons, pop quizzes, and mini-games that make personal budgeting fun and interactive!
Real Life Scenarios & Events
Your students take on the role of either a college student with a part-time job or a graduate just starting their first full-time job. Either way, they are now living on their own, paying all their bills, and managing their variable income, expenses, and lots of unexpected life events!
Teacher Controls Game & Lessons
You set the initial fixed expenses, wages/salaries, income tax rates, and more to make the game unique to your class! You also choose the lessons that pop up and influence what types of “Life Events” occur so your game evolves with the topics you cover in class.
Impactful Decisions
Students need to constantly make financial decisions – work extra hours or spend time studying in school. Buy renter’s insurance this month, or take the risk? Their game score increases as students reach their savings goals, improve their credit score, and build their Quality of Life.
Easy to Use; Full Reporting
Teachers can easily track student progress throughout the game. All transactions they make are exportable to excel or Google sheets; which includes their bank statements, credit card statements, and pay stubs!
With this information students can run activities in the class based on their actions in the game. For instance; cashflow statements, monthly budgets or compare the different choices they made.
How to Use the Budget Game?
If you are not sure how to use our budget game, click the button below!
• Registering your class to the PersonalFinanceLab comes with an extensive collection of experiential learning exercises to maximize your students’ understanding of personal finance, investing, economics, and business. Assignments include articles, videos, interactive calculators, and exams that are self-graded and included in the students’ progress reports.
6 Subjects, One Tool
In addition to Personal Finance lessons, PersonalFinanceLab.com also includes dozens of integrated activities for economics, accounting, investments, marketing, and management classes!
8 Reasons Why Your School Needs PersonalFinanceLab
1.Personal Budgeting Game – Students take on the role of a young adult with their first job and manage a budget. Rent, car loan, utilities, groceries and many unexpected expenses challenge them to stay on budget. Students learn to manage cash and credit cards. ▶ Learn more
2.Stock Market Game – Real-time stock game, with live streaming portfolios and class rankings, instant order execution, integrated research and reporting. Quotes, charts, news and analyst ratings help students research and learn to invest. ▶ Learn more
3.Integrated Curriculum With Built-In Assessments – Teaching a class on Personal Finance, Economics, Business, Accounting and Investing? We’ve got integrated curriculum that meets National Standards that can be blended in to our games. ▶ Learn more
4.Live data displayed in your Classroom – Use any LCD screen to broadcast Words of the Day, class rankings, streaming stock charts, watchlists, market news, and much more! Use real-time financial news and current events to keep students learning each day. ▶ Learn more
5. Certifications – Students who complete all 50 Personal Finance lessons, as well as the 12 months of the Budget Game and place 25 trades in the Stock Game can earn the Financial Literacy Certificate. In both cases, all the badges the students earned is printed on the back of the certificate.
6. New Enhancements – We are constantly improving our platform, with new features and updates. You can check the features for Spring 2022 here.
7. Webinars and Events – Our team hosts webinars to introduce updates and answer any questions that teachers may have regarding the platform. Our support is exclusive and is always available to the teacher and school.
8. Career Center – Your students will understand the importance of internships, certifications, and preparing for interviews as important life skills. Students have access to the PersonalFinanceLab Job and Internship center, which pulls local job postings from dozens of different job boards to continually remind students of what skills employers are looking for after they graduate – as an extra push to succeed in school!
Want More Info, a Demo, or you Want Us To Call You?
There are a lot of new enhancements that will improve how both teachers and students use the platform!
General Improvements
New Dashboard
• Our new Dashboard brings all your student’s actions into one place
Live Chat
• PFinLab now has live chat support available for teachers and students (during market hours)
Onboarding
• First-time users now get help to get started on key pages (teachers too!)
Stock Game Enhancements
Weekly Deposits
• Instead of lump-sum cash to invest, students have periodic deposits into their stock game account
Custom Exchanges
Restrict your investing universe! Common uses include:
Just the S&P 500 or DOW 30
Only stocks with a strong local presence
Each student picks 5 stocks at the start that they research, open to everyone to trade
Mutual Fund Research
New mutual fund research tools! See:
Fund overviews
Fund performance
Fund holding
…plus the same research you can find for Stocks and ETFs!
Spots Trading
• “Cash Spots” trading now supports basic commodities!
Risk Adjusted Rankings
For Finance Classes, improvements to Risk Adjusted Rankings!
Sharpe Ratio
Jensen’s Alpha
Treynor Ratio
Budget Game Enhancements
Images and Colors
Improved Paychecks
• Better transition from Part-Time to Full-Time mode • Part-Time mode hours are more consistent (14-30 hours, instead of 5-35 hours)
Historical Views
• Students can now look back and see when they had transactions in previous months
Zero-Cost Bills
The game now supports zero-priced bills • Example: Students do not need to pay rent while still in school (since they live with their parents)
More Long-Term Impacts
• Multi-month discounts on bills • Card deck shuffles differently depending on a “Status”
Assignment Enhancements
New and Improved Certificates
• Financial Literacy Certificate + Investing101 Certificate • Students can download the PDF, and they earn a badge to show off on the rankings page!
New Logging System
• Some reports from schools that students were not getting credit • New assignment logging system opens the doors to more reports in the future!
Administration Enhancements
New and Improved Widgets
• For schools with our Widget Packs, new ranking types, financial data, and even custom widgets now available!
New Fun Facts Report
• Great bell-ringer – see what students are buying and selling for any date range!
Improved Data Exports
• Admins can now pull transaction history and open positions export live • … But this may fail for VERY large classes (150+ students). Our support team can help!
If you want a printable PDF to download and share with your students, click here.
Dates: Registration now open. Challenge runs March 22nd to April 30th. Teachers can continue using PersonalFinanceLab for free until June 30th.
Prizes: The Top 20 students from each contest, (from the Budget Game and Stock Game) each win a $100 Amazon gift card for their classroom. Teachers of the top-performing finalists will be notified the week after the challenge ends. They will decide how the prizes will be spent for their class.
*Prizes are based on April 30th, and the winners will be announced on the first week of May. The challenge will remain open until June 15th, so teachers can continue using the games and lessons after the prize period ends.*
About the Challenge: This is a free national competition where students learn about budgeting, credit cards, investing, insurance, income, taxes, and transitioning to their job after school – all in a fun game environment with national rankings and prizes. Students complete 12 virtual months of our Personal Budgeting Game, 30 Financial Literacy lessons, and build a virtual portfolio of stocks, ETFs, bonds, and mutual funds. They can earn a certificate in Personal Finance by completing all the included lessons as well.
Extra-curricular activity: The challenge works excellent as a supplement during Financial Literacy Month with little to no class time requirements – making it perfect for the entire school. The challenge is already set up for you! All you have to do is register, and your students will get access to our budget game, stock game, and assignments. Your students only need around 20 minutes a day to complete a virtual month and the accompanying activities. The best part is that they learn a variety of personal finance lessons at the same time!
Register your class for our FREE Spring 2021 Financial Literacy Challenge!
If you are not sure how to use our budget game or stock game, click the buttons below! When you are ready, scroll up and click the “Register Now” button! ?
There are a lot of new enhancements that will be coming this January and will improve how both teachers and students use the platform.
Quick Overview
Stock Game
Weekly Deposits
$1 Starting Cash
Budget Game
Starting Positions
Graphics Update
System Updates
New Badges
New Widgets
New Certifications
New “Combo” Dashboard
New Onboarding for Teachers and Students
Stock Game Updates
Focusing on bringing more emphasis on Personal Investing, which mimics how people invest their money in the real world. Starting out with a small amount of cash, (like $1) and then adding weekly deposits every week for the rest of the semester.
Students need to continually reinvest these new funds, ranging from $100 to $50,000 that is automatically added to their accounts each week. This rebalancing is replicating how investors save for their retirement, buying a car or house or any other goals they may have.
To encourage students to complete their lessons, teachers can set rewards that add a lump sum into their account only when they finish their assignments. This integrates the lessons into the game so everything is interconnected. Students would only be able to make trades after they’ve watched the tutorial videos since their accounts will be empty when they first start. What stocks should students buy? Read this Motley Fool Review for the best performing stocks.
Budget Game Updates
Students will now start the game and immediately set their budget for the upcoming month. Including their expected income and expenses, as well as their savings goals BEFORE choosing their apartment, meal plan, internet and cell phone plans.
We’re also upgrading all the graphics in the game to add more illustrations and images to every event card to bring the game to life. Also, we’re rearranged the Budget Game to be the first step when creating your class.
New badges
New Mastery badges have been added! These are earned by students who complete full units of lessons and activities in the Stock Game and Budget Game.
For example, become a “Credit Master” by completing all the lessons related to Credit, plus building a credit score in the Budget Game and collecting badges for trading specific combinations of stocks from different sectors in the Stock Game. This encourages students to go above and beyond the bare class minimums
Widget Update
Customize and broadcast news to your classroom much more easily than ever before! You will now be able to change the parameters yourself from the administration tab. Options include; watchlists for top traded stocks, (e.g. the Dow Jones) portfolio rankings, word of the day for investing and more.
Each widget can be set per class and for specified periods of time. A unique URL will be generated that automatically runs a rotation of your selection on any screen with internet connection.
You can create as many screens as you want and host them on monitors in your personal finance lab or classroom. There are a lot more options than ever before, so you can broadcast your own google slides, your school website or even weekly or monthly rankings.
If you’ve purchased the Data Widget bundle, a member of our team will be in touch with you in the coming weeks to explain how you can set this up yourself. Contact us at sales@stocktrak.com if you would like to add this to your classroom.
Certifications
New Investing and Financial Literacy certificates of completion are now in beta testing. If you want early access you can test it out now, and it will be fully functional by mid-January 2021.
Students who complete all 10 chapters of our Investing101 course and complete 25 trades can earn this certificate. Students who complete all 50 Personal Finance lessons, as well as the 12 months of the Budget Game and place 25 trades in the Stock Game can earn the Financial Literacy Certificate.
In both cases, all the badges the students earned is printed on the back of the certificate. Even if they weren’t part of the curriculum.
The certification will be available from the main menu and will include 30-50 activities to complete. Once students are done, they can download their certificate as a PDF along with all their competencies on the date they finished.
Combo Dashboard
The new dashboard will be available before the holidays, and we expect further updates to continue into next semester as we get more feedback from teachers and students. Once implemented, anyone who logs into their account will have an overview of everything included in their class right from the dashboard.
This includes portfolio rankings, open positions, budget game status and a summary of assignment progress with their due dates. Class announcements will also be available as well as market news, word of the day and top traded securities. Teachers will have a slightly different view with more information on how students are progressing overall.
Onboarding
Starting this January, new “product tours” will launch when students and teachers login to Pfinlab for the first time. It will continue to be available as a “help button” from the top menu if you ever need assistance later on.
For Teachers
When you login in for the first time, the tour will help you set-up your first class. Showing you the default settings and providing recommendations to help you customize everything for your class.
For Students
Students will be taken on an interactive tour highlighting how to access the Budget and Stock Game and what everything means. They will continue to have access to more in-depth tutorial videos demonstrating how to use the investment tools.
Recommended Course Outline
When you set-up your class for the first time, adding the name and description of the class etc. you may want to start using the private option to limit access from outside students. We’ve received many complaints about this from teachers, so if you haven’t used the password protection in the past, it’s a good feature to start using.
If you choose to turn off “Show Certificates,” the system will still record all the assignments and tasks your students complete. So if you choose to turn it on later, they will still get credit.
Moving forward, the Budget Game settings will be moved to the beginning of the class set-up process to reflect how most students use the platform in their class. Here is a proposal of how you could set-up your class to take advantage of some of our new features.
1. Students get access to the Budget Game and learn about budgeting and saving goals. 2. They have $1.00 in their portfolios so they can’t invest yet, so they can use this time to watch the trading tutorials. 3. When they complete their first assignments, they get a reward of a lump sum (e.g. $100) that allows them to start investing. 4. Every subsequent week, students will get a weekly deposit into their account to invest in stocks, mutual funds and bonds (or whatever else is available). 5. This integrates the Budget Game, Stock Game and assignments together so that students learn how related their personal budgets are to their investing activities.
Coming Spring 2021
Curriculum Update – a huge overhaul to our assignment engine will enable faster updates and will improve the teacher reports. Later in the spring, we’ll have another update that provides more in-depth information to teachers on topics students are having the most trouble with. Allowing you to pinpoint what to focus on in lectures and provide more support for.
Budget Game Speed Limits – a method to prevent students from racing ahead and finishing the entire game ahead of schedule. This will allow you to set assignments and tasks to complete in the game, (for example more insurance cards) to reinforce core concepts as they progress through the curriculum.
A student loan is exactly what it sounds like – a loan given to students to finance their studies. This is most common for college or university students, but also works for trade schools and other vocational studies.
Most of the time when a person takes out a loan, they are using it to invest in an asset that they will use later – like a mortgage for a house or a car loan for a car. With a Student Loan, you are investing in yourself. The gamble you make is that the cost of the loan (plus interest) will be less than the extra income you’ll earn with the new education.
Before You Start – The FASFA
The FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. If you want to pursue higher education, this is the first place to start, even before you look at student loans. If you qualify for federal financial aid, it is basically free money you can put towards education (and reduce the total amount you need to borrow).
The FAFSA form can be a bit long and may require you or your parents’ tax information to see what aid you can qualify for. But when you are looking to go to school, this is the first step in the process. Many universities insist every student complete the FASFA before taking out any student loans to lower the total debt burden students will have when they graduate.
Types of Student Loans
There are a few types of student loans available for students in the United States, depending on their needs.
Federal Loans
The cheapest loans are provided by the US Department of Education. These loans are only available for students at federally approved colleges, universities, or trade schools. These have a low interest rate, but also allow very little to be borrowed – potentially not even enough to cover tuition and school fees (let alone housing costs). Federal loans have two types – “Subsidized” and “Unsubsidized”.
With a subsidized loan, the Department of Education pays off all interest while you are in school, and for up to 6 months after you graduate while you try to find a job. This makes subsidized loans very cheap, but these loans are the hardest to get (with the lowest amount you can borrow). You need to show that you have “Financial Need” to qualify for a subsidized loan.
Unsubsidized loans accumulate interest as soon as you take out the loan, so you’ll be building up interest the whole time you’re in school. But Federal Loans typically have a low interest rate, so this can still be an attractive option for many students (compared to private loans).
A single borrower can have both types of loans at the same time, so you might have some of your borrowed amount accumulating interest while the other is not.
How Much You Can Borrow
The amount you can borrow with a federal loan is determined by your school – schools work with the Department of Education to ensure students do not over-borrow on federal loans (meaning borrow more than the minimum it should cost to attend school).
You can borrow the less in your first and second years because of the risk of dropping out – the program is designed to prevent students who drop out of college from being saddled with massive debt that they are unable to repay.
If You Are A Dependent – PLUS Loans
If you are still a “dependent” of your parents for tax reasons, you can borrow even less, as it is assumed your parents should be helping you out with some of your school costs if they can claim you on their taxes.
But if your family already has financial need, your parents can obtain what are called “PLUS” loans. With a PLUS loan, your parents would take out a student loan on your behalf to help pay for your school. The difference is that your PARENTS are the ones responsible for paying back the loan, not you.
PLUS loans are not very popular – their interest rate is much higher than direct student loans, and parents in families with financial need are not usually able to take on the additional debt burden.
Private Student Loans
Private student loans are issued by other private banks and lenders. The interest rate is determined by the general market interest rate. Sallie Mae is the largest provider of private student loans – if you need student loans to finance your education, you will probably work with them at some point or another.
Private Loan Advantages
While federal loans are usually cheaper than private loans, private loans have some distinct advantages:
Much simpler application process – usually just one or two forms with a credit check. This means the time to apply and start school is shorter and easier.
Flexible Terms – with different payment plans, when you start paying, and ways to defer interest until you graduate depending on your needs.
Bigger Amounts – you can usually borrow a lot more with private loans than federal loans.
Easier to Manage – By having all of your loans in one place (skipping the federal loans entirely), you have one application process to go through each year, one payment to make after you graduate, and an easier time managing your budget.
Private Loan Risks
Student loan debt in the United States has skyrocketed, which makes some parts of private student loans controversial. The biggest drawbacks of student loans include:
Too easy to borrow too much – college students are not celebrated for their skill in personal budgeting. Private student loans let students borrow more money – and money in the bank is money that can be spent. It can be hard to remember when you’re taking out a loan that you will eventually need to pay it back, and over-borrowing as a student (and accumulating interest the whole time you’re in school) is a good way to start your career saddled with a huge amount of debt.
Discourages a mix – Private student loan providers usually encourage students to get all of their student loans in one place to simplify the process every school year, but this means you might miss out on better interest rates for part of your debt that you might have gotten with a federal loan. Mixing federal and private loans is a lot more work, but it can save a lot of money in the long-run.
Flexible terms can be confusing – all of the flexible repayment options makes it sound easier to manage, but it can be challenging to know when you first sign up for a loan which path makes the most financial sense for you. This can be an extra risk.
At the end of the day, taking private loans is still a great way to finance your education, but it takes good financial discipline on your part to avoid graduation day saddled with debit.
Risks of All Student Loans
Whether you have a Federal loan or a Private loan, there are some unique risks associated with student loans.
The Risk Is On YOU
With a student loan, you are investing in yourself – the education you receive with the loan money should increase your future income. Unlike a house or car (which you can sell if you get behind on payments), if you do not complete your education, you get no benefit and all of the debt.
This means that before you take out any student debt, you should be sure that you can commit to finishing school and obtaining your degree. Ideally, you should also do some career research to see what kind of starting salary you will earn after you graduate when you plan how much you can borrow. Most undergraduate students wildly over-estimate how much they will earn after graduation – you can find estimates per major through surveys conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (https://www.naceweb.org/).
Bankruptcy Does Not Work
If you rack up credit card debt or other types of loans, you always have the option of bankruptcy relief. But bankruptcy works by selling off your assets, negotiating with lenders, and coming out with a payment plan.
Because student loans are based only on the skills and credentials you should have earned while in school, student loan debt does not qualify from bankruptcy protection – there is no escape, and you are stuck with it until you can pay it off.
Budgeting Is Essential
Knowing how to build an effective budget, and stick with it, while in school is the best thing you can possibly do to manage your student loans. Ideally, at the end of each year, you should have a sizable amount of the loan amount that you did not use (and kept as an Emergency Fund), and can repay immediately when you graduate to lower the interest you need to pay going forward.
This means you need strong long-term planning, good impulse control, and the ability to see yourself after graduation – and understand how much your loan payments are going to cut out of every paycheck.
Student Loan Best Practices
If you are considering higher education and might need student loans, follow these steps:
Complete The FAFSA. This is free money that you do not need to pay back, and so will reduce the amount of loans you need to take. You will need to complete this first before most student loan programs will even take your application.
Look For Scholarships. Sallie Mae has a scholarship search tool, and others exist as well. Scholarships are another source of free money, and most scholarships receive very few applications because students never bother to apply. Spending a few hours searching and applying for scholarships can save off thousands of dollars from your final loan amount.
Start With Federal Loans. Apply for federal loans first, especially subsidized federal loans. It takes a bit more work every year to get funded, but the lower interest rate will save big money when it comes to repay. You cannot apply for federal student loans directly – after you complete your FAFSA, your college or university should present you with your federal loan options.
Minimize Private Loans. Most students end up needing some private loans to finance their education (particularly living expenses), but this should be the last piece you apply for once you’ve already shaved off as much as you can with the other options.
After Graduation – Refinance
After you graduate from school, investigate options to refinance your student loans. By the time you finish school, you will probably have several different student loans (mixes between Federal and Private, different periods and interest rates, ect), which can be tricky to manage.
However, there are many companies set up specifically to refinance your student loans after graduation, usually paying you a loan transfer bonus, and potentially a lower interest rate. Refinancing companies want to see that you’ve started work (and how much you’re earning) before they give you options, but this is an often over-looked way to save thousands more dollars on your total debt burden right out of school.
Get PersonalFinanceLab
This lesson is part of the PersonalFinanceLab curriculum library. Schools with a PersonalFinanceLab.com site license can get this lesson, plus our full library of 300 others, along with our budgeting game, stock game, and automatically-graded assessments for their classroom - complete with LMS integration and rostering support!
You may or may not have used PersonalFinanceLab in your classes before. Many teachers know how to take advantage of all its resources, but there are always new schools registered that need a basic tutorial on how to use the platform.
With that in mind, we created this post to highlight the main points you should know about the Budget Game. If you have any further questions, check out our tutorial video below.
About the Budget Game
Your students take on the role of a college student with a part-time job – in most scenarios, students have roommates, so they need to manage shared household expenses for the first part of the game.
They graduate from school and become a full-time worker part-way through the game – they become a full-time worker (40-hour work per week), with more consistent income, but also with bigger expenses, since they no longer have roommates.
Emphasis is on managing CASH FLOW and reinforcing PAY YOURSELF FIRST saving strategy – the goal is not necessarily to make students break their expenses down on a spreadsheet. The idea is to make students control and manage their expenses and income to build healthy finance habits.
Students Objectives
Emergency Fund – Students’ first major goal is to save an Emergency Fund of $1000 – doing so earns a huge point bonus
Credit Score – Students have a credit card they can use for purchases. Using it responsibly builds up their Credit Score and increases their Credit Limit.
Savings Goals – We ask students to set a “Savings Goal” every month. Students get bonus points if they save at least 10% of their income every month.
Quality of Life – Avoiding every expense is not a winning strategy. Students earn “Quality of Life” points by buying nice things, having a better apartment, and spending time with friends
“Life” Balance – Students also need to take care to spend time on chores or studying – their landlords give inspections and fines, and failing an exam can have big penalties.
Launching the Game
To kick off the game for your class, give them a prompt describing their scenario:
You are taking on the role of a college student in their last semester. You have a part-time job and are sharing an apartment with roommates. You will earn a paycheck each week, have bills to pay, and a credit card you can use – your goal is to build up your Emergency Fund and Credit Score while maintaining a high Quality Life.
After you graduate from school, you will move to a new apartment on your own and start your full-time job. You will have more (and bigger) bills, but also a bigger, steady paycheck. Keep hitting your Savings Goals and keep a high Credit Score and Quality of Life to max out your financial future!
– This is important because it helps students understand what they’re doing in the game as they’re moving through time. They need to understand that this transition from a student to a worker is very different –
First Learning Points – Unplanned Expenses
When students start the game, one of their first goals is to balance their expected income and expenses so they can set their first Savings Goal.
We give students most information, but they need to take a guess at how much they will spend on “Unplanned” expenses each month.
This is a key learning point – the first month will be a complete guess, but after a couple of months, students will see that small “impulse” and “last-minute” purchases add up quickly to be a major part of their spending!
First Learning Points – Pay Yourself First
Every month students also need to set their Monthly Savings Goal.
The secret is that we don’t care what their expected expenses are – to get the most points, students need to save at least 10% of their expected income.
This is a key tenant of the “Pay Yourself First” savings strategy, a foundation of the budget game.
First Learning Points – Quality of Life
When students start the game, they are also asked to make several lifestyle choices:
Where will they live? Crammed in with 5 roommates, or a nicer place with just 1 friend?
What kind of TV/Internet package do they want? Just the basics, or a full-service package?
How about their Cell Phone and data plan?
And how will they be feeding themselves? Lots of cheap ramen and pasta, or lots of eating out?
These choices have a big impact on their Quality of Life – more expensive options give students a better Quality of Life and bonus points, but make it harder to hit their savings goals.
Discussion Point
Every student will have different events through the game – try launching a class discussion on what were the biggest expenses students faced each month. How frequently would students expect each expense to happen in the real world?
First Month
As students progress through the first few months, the game will pause and prompt students to complete short lessons.
We cover Credit and Debit, Savings Goals, Emergency Funds, and other essentials students need to succeed in the game in the first month, and more general finance concepts as the game goes on.
Life Events
At the end of each term, they get a life event. There’s two major types of led events: Fixed Expenses and Choices.
Fixed Expenses
Students don’t get any choice in it.
Either they need to choose to pay for something on their debit or credit card, either they need to choose to pay for it or skip it.
Choices
The choice cards have a big impact on their quality of life. Taking the more expensive option usually gives students a lot more points on the Quality of Life throughout the game.
Example: Students need to choose either they want or not to pay for house insurance. If they choose to don’t pay for it, there is a chance to have a break in every month, costing them several hundred dollars.
Discussion Point
Every choice in the budget game matters. The “Life Events” that pop up through the game are somewhat determined by the choices students make as they play.
What happened to you this month? What did you do before that had an impact on this? What would you have changed to make this outcome better? You can discuss this with students since they can give a recap of what worked well and what they would have changed in the past.
Ending the First Month
At the end of the first month, students get a summary of their savings and expenses, along with their progress to their savings goal.
Hitting a savings goal of 10% or more of their income earns big bonus points.
Teacher Tips
Make sure to play at least the first month of the game together as a class
End the first month of a recap – what were unexpected expenses? How did students cope? What will they do differently next month?
Assessments
Building assessments around the budget game is a matter of art. You will get the most out of your students if you ask them to provide “Monthly Summaries” as written document – specify what went right, wrong, and what they plan to do to fix it.
Be sure to also use the Assignments built into PFinLab — these have quizzes with automatically-graded quizzes you can use for more objective grading!
The Next Months…
Students will build up their Credit Score and Emergency Fund for the first part of the game, with lessons along the way.
Keep students “paced” by completing assignments and quizzes, rather than hour-long blocks of just the game itself.
Students will build up their Credit Score and Emergency Fund for the first part of the game, with lessons along the way.
Keep students “paced” by completing assignments and quizzes, rather than hour-long blocks of just the game itself.
The Rankings
The Budget Game also has a ranking page, showing student rankings by Overall Score, Net Worth, Credit Score, and Quality of Life.
Pay attention and give students shout-outs – even students at the bottom of the list!
Graduation
After playing as a part-time student for a semester, students “Graduate” from school and start their first full-time job.
They will need to pick a new place to live and other settings (as they no longer have roommates), and now get a consistent 40-hours per week salary at a higher pay grade.
Key Learning Point
The starting salary students get when starting their full-time job depends on how much they “studied” when a student. Students who “studied” often get a bigger paycheck with their full-time job!
Full-Time Mode Differences
Bigger Bills – Students no longer have roommates, their bills all go up significantly
Bigger Paychecks – Students have a pay raise and work a steady 40-hours a week
Professional Development – Instead of studying, students can undertake “Professional Development” on the weekend (and raise their salary with enough of it)
New Bills – New “Student Loan” and “Health Insurance” bills to pay every month
Key Learning Point
On the weekend, “Study” becomes “Professional Development” – as every student in the modern economy should understand the importance of lifetime learning. Conducting “Professional Development” frequently leads to a raise at their job!
Other Full-Time Mode Differences
Once students start their full-time job, they will be faced with even more choices and long-term impacts than before.
Getting a pet? Expect to spend more at the grocery shop, and new vet bills pop up as Life Events… But also expect to boost your Quality of Life.
More emphasis on household expenses, insurance, and general “Adulting”
Key Learning Point
As students complete 6, 12, 18+ months of the game, most of the healthy financial habits should become second nature.
After 12 months, how many students have a full 840 credit score? Launch a class discussion with both the students at the top and bottom of the class rankings to identify what went right and wrong, and discuss the importance of establishing healthy habits early!
If you have used a stock game in your class before, you know the drill – you choose your class’s custom rules and starting cash (usually around $100,000), your students sign in, and they use that cash to build their portfolio that they manage over the course of a semester.
This might make sense to a professional fund manager who has a certain amount of assets, but is a far cry from how personal investors build their wealth over time. PersonalFinanceLab’s newest enhancement turns this system on its head with our new Weekly Deposits – the biggest thing to happen to stock games since stocks!
How It Works
With Weekly Deposits, you would start off your class with a relatively small amount of starting cash – say $100, $1000, or even $10,000.
Then every Sunday evening, your students get extra cash deposited into their account – as the teacher, you choose exactly how much.
This completely transforms a passive “Fund Manager” stock game into a true Personal Finance exercise. Just like the real world, students regularly add money into their portfolio, which they need to continually re-invest and re-balance, rather than passively holding a few stocks they purchased on the first day of your class game.
This matches how a small investor really builds their portfolio – one transfer at a time!
Using Weekly Deposits In Class
Weekly Deposits opens up a whole new world for ways to use the PersonalFinanceLab stock game in classes. Here’s a few scenarios to consider for your next semester:
The Junior Investor
When we ask for student feedback, one of the biggest downsides of a “$100k stock game” is that it is more money than the average student can really conceptualize. For Weekly Deposits, you can create a “Micro-Investor, Regular Saver” game!
Start students out with just $100 starting cash – putting a true limit on what they can invest
Set a weekly deposit of $100, to mimic students saving an extra $100 out of every paycheck for the duration of your class.
As your class stock game goes on, students will be able to afford different stocks, and need to rebalance their portfolio to adjust. Do they keep re-balancing to maintain diversification, or do they cash out all their Ford stock (around $8/share) to buy one share of Apple (around $120/share) after the first week?
The Career Saver
This scenario gives a bit more flexibility for students to build a diversified portfolio right off the bat.
Start students with $10,000 in starting cash, with our normal 25% position limit rules (students need at least 4 different stocks to use all their starting cash)
Deposit an additional $1000 cash each week. In the scenario for your students, this will be a “sped-up” monthly savings that they need to re-invest.
In this scenario, students need to continually re-balance their portfolio to stay diversified as their cash goes up. Do they keep investing in the same stocks they started with, or build up a wide portfolio of many holdings?
Budget Game Combo
The new Weekly Deposits also adds a great dimension for classes also using our Budget Game. By leveraging our Assignments, you can automatically credit students’ Stock Game accounts after they complete specific actions in the Budget Game, like completing a certain number of months or completing specific lessons in the Learning Center.
In our back-end, we adjust the Weekly Deposits by incrementing up the student’s starting cash balance. For the rankings, it means that the “percentage returns” are not distorted by the weekly deposits. However, classes that might be using more advanced rankings, such as Sharpe Ratio and Alpha/Beta, will see some distortion.
How To Get A Weekly Deposit Stock Game For Your Class
If your school already has a PersonalFinanceLab site license, “Weekly Deposits” are a new rule you’ll see right after choosing your Starting Cash Balance for your next stock game.
If your school does not yet have a PersonalFinanceLab site license, use the form below to get a quote!
[contact-form-7 id=”17909″ title=”Pfinlab Order Form”]