The Fall semester is here, and boy do we have a huge set of updates for you! New This Fall Combined Budget + Stock Game! This is a big one – teachers can now directly connect the Budgeting Game and Stock Games for their class with direct money transfers! This update means that instead of Read More…

When you have students participating in our stock game, it can be a struggle to get students to understand the basics of conducting research and comparing stocks. After all, between stock prices, the news, financial statements, stock charts, and what they hear from their friends, there is a lot of noise out there – and Read More…

Personal Finance is all about choices – like economics, it is a “dismal science” of choosing between trade-offs. In our budgeting game, we make a point to highlight these tradeoffs in how students choose to spend their free time each weekend – the Weekend Choice. The Weekend Choice is a decision students need to make Read More…

Investing is all about trying to maximize gains and minimizing losses. But we aren’t trying to teach students to be constantly watching every investment in their retirement account – what can the average investor use to protect their nest-egg without limiting their investment growth? Introducing Trailing Stops There are more options when investing than just Read More…

Hey Teachers – we’ve got an exciting update for our learning library for January 2024! New Video First up, we have a new video about how to manage receipts! This video is included in our lesson on “Managing Receipts” in our Personal Finance Learning Library for classes too. This joins our other video lessons covering Read More…

As students work through the PersonalFinanceLab Budgeting Game, they can see their class rankings, and might have some sense of how their game score or net worth has grown over time. But to really get a clear picture of how their financial future is shaping up, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a single Read More…

Learning how to file a federal income tax return is a cornerstone of every Personal Finance class. At PersonalFinanceLab, we’re excited to share our two activities specifically designed to help students learn how to file their own taxes once they start work. Filing Taxes Mini-Lesson As part of the Budget Game, we have a built-in Read More…

PersonalFinanceLab is packed to the brim with Financial Literacy Resources for schools, with the cornerstone being our library of 300+ standards-aligned, customizable lessons built into our Assignments engine that teachers can leverage for their class. Most of our lessons take students less than 15 minutes to complete, with a 3-5 question, automatically-graded quiz at the Read More…

PersonalFinanceLab’s Budget Game is an awesome tool to help teach students how to manage their money, pay bills on time, build up their credit, and get experience managing personal finances in a safe enviornment. But one of the cornerstones of true financial literacy is being able to look over financial records, like bank statements, and Read More…

One of our recently featured highlights was Assignment Rewards – a great way to incentivize students to complete their lessons on time. But as the teacher, how can you find which of your students earned their bonuses? Introducing Rewards Reporting When you set up your Assignment Rewards, you have the option to credit it to Read More…

At PersonalFinanceLab, we’re all about making Personal Finance easier to teach – and that means making sure teachers have the resources they need, right where they need them. With this in mind, we’re excited to announce a complete revamp of our Admin Dashboard! Meet Your New Dashboard The new Admin Dashboard was designed with ease-of-use Read More…

PersonalFinanceLab has over a dozen different reports – showing class registration information, budget game progress, stock game trades, and more. But you’re a busy teacher – you want one page that has exactly the information that is most relevant to your class. Don’t worry – our Custom Reporting tools are here to help! Custom Reports Read More…

PersonalFinanceLab’s lesson library and assignments is an awesome way to add extra supplements to your class – you can even give students rewards in their stock portfolio or budget game checking account when they complete their lessons on time! But an article with a quiz at the end is not the best way to keep Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

Did It Work? 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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

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 Read More…

Our latest teacher webinar walks through some of the basics of gamification – and the keys to best leverage these new levels of engagement to supercharge your blended and remote classrooms this Fall! If you are using a blended or fully-remote classroom, quality online resources are more important than ever! Our new Badges and Achievement Read More…

With the next major update to the PersonalFinanceLab Budget Game, your students can graduate from school and start their Full Time Jobs! How It Works If you have used the Budget Game before, your class would have taken on the role of college students with a part-time job. They would be working variable hours each Read More…

This Summer, PersonalFinanceLab has partnered with BountyBlok to power our awesome new Badges and Achievement system to bring classroom engagement to a whole new level! Personal Finance should never be boring for students – by working with BountyBlok, our Assignments engine is supercharged with new ways to track student activity and provide them with real-time Read More…

Our first major enhancement of the summer is almost here! The next release of Personal Finance Lab focuses on our Assignments – our awesome system used to manage curriculum and track your students’ progress through our Stock Game and Budget Game. There’s three game-changing new features you can expect for your next classes: Rewards, Prerequisites, Read More…

If you find yourself teaching a class remotely for the first time this Spring, never fear! PersonalFinanceLab.com has everything you need for a knock-out distance learning class, all in one place. Our engaging simulations, interactive games, built-in assessments, multi-media curriculum, customizable lesson plans, and teacher presentation and video library has everything you need to turn Read More…

Just in time for March, the Personal Finance Lab team is excited to announce a massive new update for our budgeting game! Our latest update includes some huge enhancements for your class, including: An overhaul to the Quality of Life scores, making the point scoring system much easier to understand. A new Overall Game Score, Read More…

Very few students will ever care to know how to graph a parabola, but everyone will need to know how to do their taxes. Don’t require trigonometry but require basic tax preparation. Lindsey, 41, mixed race mother of five in Oregon suburb Personal Finance Lab’s parent organization turns 30 this year, and we have been Read More…