The Personal Budget Simulator (Budget in the sidebar) gives each student a paycheck, a set of bank accounts and a calendar full of bills, then walks them through four stages of life, from high school to early retirement. Along the way, unexpected events land and students decide how to handle them: pay cash, put it on a card, or put it off and live with the consequences. This guide covers what students learn, how to turn the simulator on, every setting you can change, how to follow your class, and how grading works.
Available on: Intertwined Core, Plus and Pro. If you're on Intertwined Solo, you can start a free 14-day trial of the Budget Simulator once (see Trying a simulator free with a 14-day trial).
What students learn
The Budget Simulator is built around one idea: money doesn't arrive or leave evenly. Rent is due on the first, pay comes every two weeks, and a car repair shows up whenever it likes. Students practice:
Budgeting a paycheck against expenses that don't arrive on a neat schedule
Telling take-home pay from salary, and needs from wants
Using a credit card without letting the balance run away, and watching a credit score respond
Why an emergency fund turns a setback into an inconvenience instead of a spiral
Weighing insurance premiums against deductibles, and setting savings goals
Balancing money with wellbeing: health, stress and social life all move with their choices
Events are written by AI for each student as they play, so two students in the same phase rarely face the same situation. That makes for good discussion: students can compare what happened to them and why they chose differently.
How the life phases work
A run moves through four life phases in order. Each phase has its own length, income, starting balances, bills and goals. When a student moves into a new phase, their accounts and wellbeing meters reset to that phase's starting values, so every phase is a fresh start with new stakes.
A newly activated simulation starts with these defaults. Your settings screen always shows the actual values for your class.
High School Student: 2 months. A part-time job paying $250 every two weeks, $300 in checking and $200 in savings. Small expenses like transportation and entertainment, and no credit card yet. Goals: keep stress at or below 60 and health at or above 70.
College Student: 6 months. $600 every two weeks, $4,000 in checking, $800 in savings and a credit card with a $1,500 limit. Rent, food, books and a phone bill arrive. Students can buy optional health and auto insurance and work toward a $1,500 emergency fund. Goals: credit score at or above 650, health at or above 60, stress at or below 70.
Full Time Employee: 6 months. $2,700 every two weeks, $3,000 in checking, $10,000 in savings and an $8,000 credit card limit. A full adult budget: rent, utilities, a car payment, groceries, retirement contributions. Employer health coverage starts switched on. Goals: credit score at or above 710, health at or above 70, stress at or below 60.
Early Retiree: 3 months. $4,000 a month in investment income, $5,000 in checking, $25,000 in savings and a $15,000 card limit, with a mortgage, property tax and healthcare to cover. Goals: credit score at or above 760, health and social life at or above 70, stress at or below 40.
To move on, a student has to reach the end of the phase with every phase goal met. Students can see their goals at all times in the Phase goals card on their dashboard, marked On track, Cutting it close or Below the line.
What ends a phase early
A student's run stops with a Game Over screen when any of these happen:
Checking and savings together drop below $0
They overdraw checking three times in one phase (each overdraft brings a fee and a warning, such as "Overdraft warning 2 of 3")
Checking stays negative for a week
Stress climbs too high
The phase ends without every phase goal met
The student then clicks Restart Phase, which puts them back at the start of that phase with its starting balances. The rest of their run is untouched, and overdraft strikes start over at zero. This is deliberate: failing a phase is a lesson, not a dead end.
Before you start
Your class needs at least one course added. Students reach the Budget Simulator through the courses in their class, so a class with no course shows students a message that there's no active simulation. See Adding a course to your classroom.
Choose your settings before students join. Each student keeps the settings that were in place when they clicked Join, so changes you make later only reach students who join after you save.
Turning on the Budget Simulator
Go to Classrooms > your class > Simulators. (You can also click Budget under Simulators in the sidebar, then choose a class.)
In the simulator picker on the right, choose Budget Simulator.
Make sure Setup is selected in the bar on the left.
In the Simulation Status card, click Activate Budget Sim. The status changes to Active and you'll see "Budget simulation activated."
Once it's active, the Difficulty & Life Phases card opens up below. There's no switch to turn the Budget Simulator off again, and no class-wide reset, so it stays available to students from here on.
Every setting, explained
Difficulty
Difficulty changes what events cost, not how often they happen. Pick Easy, Medium or Hard:
Easy: events cost about a quarter less than standard.
Medium: the standard the simulator is tuned for.
Hard: events cost about 40% more, but stay survivable.
Event costs are worked out from each phase's own income. On Medium, a minor event costs roughly 1% to 5% of a month's pay, a medium one 5% to 20%, and a major one 20% to 75%. A ceiling keeps any single event below what a student could plausibly absorb, so no phase is unwinnable by design.
Life phases
Each phase has its own card with these fields:
Included: whether the phase is part of the run. Phases marked Required can't be skipped, and in the standard setup all four are required, so this box stays checked. You shape the run through each phase's length and money instead.
Length: how many simulated months the phase lasts, from 1 to 24.
Income: the amount of each paycheck. Event costs rise and fall with it, so raising pay raises the stakes too.
Paid: how often the paycheck arrives: Weekly, BiWeekly, SemiMonthly or Monthly.
Starting checking and Starting savings: the balances a student begins the phase with.
The bills, phase goals and insurance options in each phase aren't editable.
Saving your changes
Choose a difficulty and adjust any phase fields.
Click Save settings. You'll see "Settings saved."
If students have already joined, a notice above the form tells you how many. They keep the settings they started with. Only students who join after you save get the new ones.
What students experience
Students open the simulator from their Simulators page, click Join Classroom Simulation, and land on a dashboard with their balances, a calendar of upcoming bills, their phase goals and four tabs: Calendar, Accounts, Statement and Insurance & Goals.
Each click of Continue to next scenario moves time forward a few days. Paydays and bills are processed as they come due, and in between, a life event appears that the student has to decide on. Students can move money between accounts, pay down their card, buy or drop insurance and set savings goals at any time. For a full walkthrough you can share with your class, see Personal Budget Simulator: how to play.
Following your class
In Classrooms > your class > Simulators, with Budget Simulator picked:
Class shows four tiles: Playing (with the median checking plus savings), Life phase (where most students are, and how many have finished), Game over (who is stopped on a failed phase, and the most common reason) and Warnings now (who has an active warning, such as a low balance). Click See who on a tile for names. Below that, Top of the class lists the students with the most in checking plus savings.
Students shows one student at a time: their life phase, balances and credit card, health meters, which phases they passed, savings goals, insurance and recent transactions. If their game ended early, a notice at the top says why.
For more on these views, see The Simulators tab in your classroom. The classroom Rankings tab can also rank Budget players by checking plus savings or by credit score (see Rankings and leaderboards).
Grading the Budget Simulator
To grade it, create an assignment of the Simulator type and choose Budget simulator (see Creating an assignment). Its column then appears in your Gradebook with a suggested score for each student, which you can accept or change. Nothing counts until you record it.
The suggestion blends effort and outcome, 50/50 unless you change the weighting. Effort is how far through the life phases a student has gotten, with a phase in progress counting as half. Outcome combines the share of finished phases they passed with how few overdraft strikes they took, and is reduced if they're stopped on a failed phase. For the full picture, see Simulator scores in the Gradebook.
Tips
Set your difficulty and phase lengths before the first student clicks Join. It's the only way to be sure everyone plays under the same rules.
With the default lengths, a run covers 17 simulated months, which takes most classes several sessions. Shortening phase lengths is the simplest way to fit the run into fewer class periods.
Teach the overdraft rule up front. Students who know that three overdrafts in one phase ends it start moving money into checking before a bill lands.
Pause the class at each phase change and debrief. Ask students which event hurt most and what they'd do differently with what they know now.
Use Warnings now on the Class view as a quick check-in list during work time.
Common questions
A student says there's "No Active Budget Simulation." What's wrong?
Either the simulator hasn't been activated for their class, or the class has no course added yet. Check both in Classrooms > your class. Once both are in place, the student can reload the page and click Join Classroom Simulation.
Can I change settings after students have started?
Yes, but students who already joined keep the settings they started with. Your changes apply to students who join after you save.
Can I restart a student's game?
There's no teacher reset for the Budget Simulator. When a student's run stops on a failed phase, they restart that phase themselves with Restart Phase, which keeps everything they did in earlier phases.
Can I turn the Budget Simulator off?
Not at the moment. Once activated, it stays available to the class.
Why does my student's game say a phase failed even though their balances look fine?
At the end of each phase, every phase goal has to be met, including health, stress and credit score. A student with healthy balances can still miss a wellbeing or credit goal. The Phase goals card shows which meter is short.