Learn by Doing,
in a Safe Environment.

Most adults learn personal finance the expensive way — by living through their own mistakes. Financial Life Simulation lets a student experience a full adult lifetime of money decisions, from age 18 to 85, before any of it counts.

You don't get a do-over on your twenties.

Compound interest. The true cost of a seven-year car loan. The difference between a Roth and a Traditional IRA. These are the lessons most people learn in retrospect — after the choices are already paid for. We think they should be lessons you experience first, in a place where mistakes only cost a few clicks.

88%

of US adults say financial literacy should be a required subject in high school — but only 26 states currently require it for graduation.

— Council for Economic Education, 2024
$11kavg

extra a typical household pays over the life of a first auto loan that wasn't shopped or negotiated — money quietly handed to the lender.

— Federal Reserve, household debt reports
1in 3

US adults cannot cover an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing or selling something. Often, the gap is a missing habit, not a missing dollar.

— Federal Reserve SHED survey

Sixty-seven years of decisions,
one semester of class.

A student starts at 18 with a career, a standard of living, and a bit of cash. They advance year by year — making decisions, weathering random events, paying bills, investing — and watch a long-term financial life take shape from their choices.

  1. Step 01

    Pick your starting life

    Choose a first career, a standard of living, and how much you walked out of high school with.

  2. Step 02

    Make a year's decisions

    Housing, transportation, insurance, savings rate, investment mix — all the choices a real year asks of you.

  3. Step 03

    Weather the unexpected

    Real economic prices. Real market returns. Random events — a promotion, a fender-bender, an inheritance — shift the path.

  4. Step 04

    Advance — then try again

    Run the simulation all the way to 85. Then run it again with different choices, and see how outcomes change.

See a deeper walk-through →

A simulation is just a chance to learn these earlier.

Nobody told me that putting 4% in my 401(k) when my employer matched 6% was leaving money on the table. I learned that in 2019, at 31.
D.K. — Hillsboro, OR
I treated my first credit card like it was free money. It took me until I was 28 to crawl out of $14,000 in debt.
M.R. — Beaverton, OR
My parents talked about money like it was rude. I had no idea what an HSA was when I started my first real job.
A.P. — Camas, WA
I bought too much house at 26 and sold it at a loss at 29. A simulation would have shown me the math in five minutes.
J.M. — Gresham, OR
I wish I'd understood compound interest when I was 19, not when I was 39.
S.L. — Portland, OR
My financial literacy class in eleventh grade taught me how to balance a checkbook. That was the whole curriculum.
B.W. — Battle Ground, WA
I started investing at 33. If I'd started at 22 with the same monthly amount, I'd have nearly twice as much today.
T.H. — Lake Oswego, OR
Three months of emergency fund seemed like a lot at 24. At 36, with two kids and a mortgage, it didn't feel like much at all.
N.G. — Longview, WA

For teachers,
it's a working curriculum.

Teachers create a class tied to a real US city, so cost-of-living adjustments flow into every price in the simulation. From the dashboard, you monitor each student's progress, read their answers to reflection prompts, leave feedback, and grade as you go.

A default catalog of decisions and events ships with the app. You can edit any of them — or add your own — to match the curriculum your classroom is teaching.

See what teachers get
Teacher dashboard showing student progress and feedback
Class roster with per-student status, current age, and net worth at a glance.

Make the mistakes in the sim,
not in your twenties.

Sign your class up. Pricing is intentionally low.