This is a free national competition where you can play the Stock Game and Budget Game and get the chance to win prizes, and appear in national rankings.
If you are interested in participating, you can use the same login details you’re already using in your class. Click the link below to register to the Financial Literacy Challenge. After logging in, you can switch between sessions from the Student Dashboard.
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Prizes Total of
The top 5 students from both the Budget Game and Stock Game will each win a $50 Amazon Gift Card!
Prizes Total of
3 teachers will receive a $100 Amazon Gift Card. Students can nominate their teacher, and we’ll pick 3 lucky winners who will each get a $100 Amazon Gift Card and our Teacher Appreciation Gift Box!
Students practice managing a monthly budget, and building their emergency savings fund while learning how to make responsible money management decisions.
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Students practice managing a virtual portfolio of US stocks, bonds and mutual funds. With live rankings, research tools, and real-time prices.
80+ self-graded personal finance lessons and financial literacy tutorial videos. Teachers can track student progress and grades.
Students start the game with $500 in their Checking Account and $500 in their Investing Account. Students can play through 12 virtual “months” of the budget game, with each “month” taking about 20 minutes to complete.
For the first 6 “months” of the game, students will be college students with a part-time job. They will earn $18 an hour, and need to pay rent, phone bill, tv/internet bill, energy bill, and grocery bills every month, plus many unexpected expenses!
For the last 6 “months” of the game, students graduate from college and start their first full-time job, earning $28 an hour. Rent and other bills become more expensive, plus new bills for a car loan, car insurance, fuel, health insurance, and a student loan payment.
As students earn money in the Budgeting Game, they can choose to spend it to improve their Quality of Life, save it in their savings account to build their Emergency Fund, and transfer it to their investing account to reach their Long-Term Savings Goals!
Game score for the Budgeting Game is based on adherence to principles of Personal Finance (building their emergency fund, setting and hitting savings goals, building their credit score, and maintaining a healthy Quality of Life), NOT total net worth – but we show rankings on net worth too for fun!
Rankings in the stock game are based on the student’s percentage return on their portfolio. Transferring large amounts of money from the budgeting game to the stock game can give more investment options, but does not confer a direct advantage in the rankings.
Students taking part in the Financial Literacy Challenge also have access to over 80 supplemental lessons on personal finance topics.
These lessons are available from when a student is registered until the end of May. Completing all lessons is NOT a requirement to be eligible for prizes.
However, each student who completes all supplemental lessons by May 31, 2024 will earn the PersonalFinanceLab Certificate of Completion. Students can downloaded their certificate from their student dashboard as a PDF.
These lessons cover topics across: