Six job offers with truthfully misleading headline numbers: compute your real take-home, bid for the good seats, and survive three months of surprise bills.
Math (Financial Literacy)Grades 9-127 roles162 min3 class periods
Math (Financial Literacy)Grades 9-127 roles162 min3 class periods
A mid-sized metro job market, this year. Three class periods: the offer, the hit, and the long look.
Four to six teams graduate from the same trade program in the same month and walk into the same local job market. Six postings, every headline number truthfully misleading: teams compute their own take-home, bid a wage concession for one of the three good seats, and are DEALT one of the rest if they lose - including a contract seat that pays the biggest number on the board and withholds nothing. Then three months pass, a shared deck of losses lands on a room that has already chosen its coverage, and teams borrow from each other at rates they set themselves. Finally ten years run three different ways against one allocation. Ships in an automotive skin and a cosmetology skin off one engine.
Automotive - Compact (4 groups), Automotive - Standard (6 groups), Automotive - Standard with the caregiving hand (6 groups), Cosmetology - Compact (4 groups), Cosmetology - Standard (6 groups), Cosmetology - Standard with the caregiving hand (6 groups)
Learning Objectives
7 objectives
Standards
10 standards aligned
Where This Fits in Your Curriculum
This is the applied-practice spine of a personal finance or CTE-embedded financial literacy course, and it is built for the trade classroom rather than the economics classroom. Three class periods, one per pillar pair: earning income and spending, then managing credit and managing risk, then saving and investing. Students need percent, decimals and a calculator. They do not need prior finance content, prior tax content, or any home internet. The theme is a first job in their own trade - the game ships in an automotive skin and a cosmetology skin off one engine - but what it teaches is that a headline wage is not gross pay, gross pay is not net pay, and net pay is not what you keep. It serves personal finance teachers, CTE program instructors covering employability, and math teachers who need a unit where the arithmetic decides something.
What Students Will Learn
Compute net pay from a posted wage, including payroll tax, income tax, retirement deferral and every deduction line, and explain why the highest headline on a board is not the highest take-home.
Compare a W-2 seat and a 1099 seat on total compensation rather than on the advertised figure - withholding, self-employment tax, employer contributions, workers' compensation and who buys the health coverage.
Build a monthly budget from a computed take-home and identify which costs are fixed, which are chosen, and which are the consequence of an earlier decision.
Evaluate financing options on total cost of credit and on cash required inside the month, and show that those two rankings are not the same.
Treat insurance as a purchase of reduced variance rather than reduced expected cost, and price what an uncapped exposure is worth avoiding.
Allocate a monthly surplus across five vehicles and defend the choice on a median outcome across several futures rather than on the best single outcome.
Identify tax credits and benefit programs a household qualifies for and compute what claiming them is worth, as a calculation the household performs rather than a benefit it is handed.
Cases Included
National Standards for Personal Financial Education (2021, Jump$tart and CEE), Spending and Saving - Session 1 builds a monthly budget from a take-home figure the students computed themselves, then Session 3 asks what a monthly surplus is worth over ten years.
National Standards for Personal Financial Education, Managing Credit - Session 2 phase 3 prices five ways to finance the same kit on total cost of credit AND on cash required inside the month, and the cheapest interest rate is deliberately not the cheapest decision.
National Standards for Personal Financial Education, Earning Income - the whole of Session 1: gross versus net, W-2 versus 1099 self-employment, employer contributions as total compensation, and negotiating a wage concession for a seat.
National Standards for Personal Financial Education, Investing - Session 3 allocates a monthly amount across five vehicles and scores the median outcome across three market futures, with an employer match threshold the team has to compute in dollars.
National Standards for Personal Financial Education, Managing Risk - Session 2 phases 2 and 4: choose a coverage tier before the loss is known, then meet a loss from a shared deck and price what the deductible and the out-of-pocket maximum were worth.
National Standards for Personal Financial Education, across all six standards - every session ends in a scored decision made under a constraint the team computed itself, and the debrief interrogates the decision rather than the circumstance.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSN.Q.A.1 - Use units as a way to understand problems and to guide the solution of multi-step problems. Wage rates are quoted per hour, per book hour, per unit, per month and per year on the same board, and the seat comparison is not possible until the units agree.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSA.CED.A.1 - Create equations and inequalities in one variable and use them to solve problems. The budget worksheet is a linear inequality in the variable the team controls, and the match threshold is an equation in dollars of pay.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSA.SSE.B.4 - Derive the formula for the sum of a finite geometric series (when the common ratio is not 1), and use the formula to solve problems. For example, calculate mortgage payments. Session 3's ten-year contributions and the amortized loan options are the same series read twice.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.MD.B.5 - Weigh the possible outcomes of a decision by assigning probabilities to payoff values and finding expected values. The coverage tiers are chosen against a shared loss deck, and expected value is the wrong test for a loss you cannot absorb.
Social & Emotional Learning (CASEL)
Aligned to the CASEL framework's core competencies. These are the SEL skills students actively practice while playing.
Responsible Decision-MakingPrimary. Every session ends in a consequential choice made under a constraint the students computed themselves - which seat to bid for and what to concede, which coverage tier to hold before the loss is known, how to finance a kit, how to allocate a surplus. Nothing is decided by a roll.
Self-ManagementThe savings rate is the scored spine of Session 1 and the whole of Session 3 is delayed gratification with an explicit price on it: a Year Four want against a cushion the team has to be able to reach in the worst of three futures.
Social AwarenessThe lending floor puts the class's own interest rates on the projector with the names stripped, and the question is what makes a rate possible rather than who charged it. The employer-cost side of total compensation and the benefits cliff do the same work on the earning side.
Relationship SkillsTeams negotiate loans with each other at rates they set, and the cosmetology hand with a client book has to raise prices on people she knows and say the new number out loud.
Flexible Class Sizes
Automotive - Compact (4 groups)
Four households on a four-seat board. Keeps the carless hand, the cash-rich hand with the thinnest credential, a hand with an open tradeline and the hand locked out of the headline seat, so every scored axis still has somebody standing on it.
Automotive - Standard (6 groups)
The reference set. Six households, six seats, and all three landing seats in play including the 1099 contract.
Automotive - Standard with the caregiving hand (6 groups)
The Standard set with the young father in place of the paid-off-truck hand. Turn this on when the room can hold it: it is the only automotive set that reaches the childcare subsidy and the refundable credits.
Cosmetology - Compact (4 groups)
Four households on a four-seat board. Keeps the carless hand, the unlicensed hand, the hand with a book to price and the hand already on a lease, so the pricing decision and the credit band both still fire.
Cosmetology - Standard (6 groups)
The reference set. Six households, six seats, and all three landing seats in play including the booth chair.
Cosmetology - Standard with the caregiving hand (6 groups)
The Standard set with the parent hand in place of the kitchen-book hand. Turn this on when the room can hold it: it carries the childcare subsidy and the refundable credits, and in a room with parents in it the debrief cannot be skipped for time.
How the Game Plays Out
Turn 1: The Offer
Gross is not net
"Which of these jobs pays the most - and how would you know?"
Turn 2: The Hit
Everything is fine until it is not
"What is the difference between a bad month and a bad year?"
Turn 3: The Long Look
Ten years, five boxes
"You get one decade and one decision. What do you do with the money you have left?"
Roles Your Students Will Play
This game ships in 2 skins - Automotive Service and Cosmetology - run off one engine, and your class plays ONE of them. Each skin has 7 playable roles, dealt to teams at the start. Click any role to see their background and what they are trying to accomplish.
Top of the class
automotive
You finished first in your cohort and you have the certificate to prove it. What you do not have is a car. Every shift starts with arranging a ride and ends with arranging another one.
Goals
Get to the end of month one with money left over, which means solving transport before you solve anything else.
Work out whether moving to a room near the shop is cheaper than staying rent-free and paying for every trip.
Convert the credential into a seat: it is worth something in the bid and nothing on the budget sheet.
Certified early
automotive
You paid for two certifications before you graduated and you financed them. The certifications are on your resume. The payment is on your bank statement, every month, starting now.
Goals
Turn the credential into the seat with the highest employer contribution.
Protect the payment history - it is worth points you cannot earn any other way.
Build any cash cushion at all before the shock month.
Worked through school
automotive
You worked nights the whole way through the program. You have more money saved than anyone else in the room and fewer certifications than anyone else in the room, and both of those are the same decision.
Goals
Land a seat that will train you, not just pay you.
Spend the cash cushion deliberately rather than a little at a time.
Beat the teams with better certificates on the thing that is actually scored: what you keep.
Keeps an old truck running
automotive
The truck is fifteen years old, it is paid off, and you keep it alive yourself. You also send money home every month, and that is not negotiable.
Goals
Turn the missing car payment into a savings rate nobody else can match.
Keep the support line intact through the shock month.
Decide whether the old truck is an asset or a shock card waiting to be drawn.
Transferred in late
automotive
You transferred into the program a year in. You have the certificate you came for, a card you opened to get through the transfer, and not much else.
Goals
Get the balance down before the shock month rather than after it.
Use the tradeline for what it is worth and stop using the card.
Land a seat with an employer financing program so the kit does not go on plastic.
Staying in town
automotive
You are not moving. Family is here, the room at home is cheaper than anywhere else, and the dealership across the county line is not on your list no matter what it pays.
Goals
Turn the rent discount into the highest savings rate in the room.
Win the best seat that is actually available to you.
Prove that the capped seat was not worth what the winner paid for it.
You have a two-year-old
automotive
You are nineteen, your two-year-old is in part-time care on the days their mother is in class, and you are the only earner in the household right now. The three of you are at your mother's house.
Goals
Work out what you actually qualify for. It is the highest-value arithmetic in this game and nobody will tell you the answer.
Keep the side work honest and keep it small enough that it stays side work.
Land a seat whose hours you can actually work around a pickup time.
Finished your hours early
cosmetology
You finished your hours ahead of the cohort and you test first, which means first pick of shifts. You do not have a car, and the salon is not walking distance from your parents' house.
Goals
Price transport at both housing rungs before you pick one. The answer is not the same as it is for the teams with cars.
Use first pick of shifts to land the days that carry the traffic.
Protect the shift you keep losing - it is income, not an inconvenience.
Paid for your own lash cert
cosmetology
You paid for a lash certification on a store card before you graduated. It pays from your first week at any chair you sit in, and so does the card.
Goals
Make the specialty pay for the card faster than the card costs you.
Keep the payment history clean - it is worth points nothing else earns.
Land a seat where lash work is actually in demand.
Worked through school
cosmetology
You worked the whole way through the program and you finish your hours a few weeks after everyone else. You will be licensed and on the floor inside the first two months - you are just the last one there.
Goals
Get through the first weeks on the cash you saved rather than on credit.
Land a seat that will keep you while you finish your hours.
Be the household that is still solvent when the shock card lands.
Doing hair in your kitchen since you were fifteen
cosmetology
You have seven regulars who have been coming to your kitchen for years at $30 a head. They are about to become salon clients, and salon clients pay salon prices.
Goals
Pick a price and be able to defend it at month 1, month 12 and month 24.
Get the book onto a chair where you keep the largest share of it.
Understand that underpricing compounds against you the same way an index fund compounds for you.
You already moved out
cosmetology
You have had your own lease for a year. You have a landlord who will vouch for you, a year of paid rent behind you, and no option to move back home.
Goals
Turn the housing history into the credit access nobody else has.
Land a seat that covers a rent the rest of the board is not paying.
Stay solvent without the rung everybody else is standing on.
Staying in town
cosmetology
You are not leaving. The rent at home is below market because it is family, and the destination salon on the other side of the county is not on your list whatever it pays.
Goals
Turn the rent discount into the best savings rate in the room.
Win the best seat that is actually open to you.
Prove the capped seat was not worth what the winner paid.
You have a two-year-old
cosmetology
You are nineteen and your two-year-old is in weekday care while you work. Your mother takes them some Saturdays, which is the day the floor carries its traffic, so you work a partial Saturday schedule.
Goals
Work out what you actually qualify for. It is the highest-value arithmetic in this game and nobody will tell you the answer.
Get the book onto a chair where you keep the largest share of it.
Land a seat whose hours fit the days you can actually work.
Hand Each Student Their Own Sheet
One click on the teacher dashboard prints a dossier for every role - background, goals, key facts, and their confidential briefing - plus the primary-source packet and a vocabulary sheet. Print them, or save as PDF, so each student reads their role on paper instead of huddling around one screen. The app still runs the votes and the action; the paper just carries the reading.
Primary Sources
Every role includes real historical documents. Students read them because they need the information to make their case.
The withholding card - how a paycheck becomes take-home pay
What a job costs an employer, and why it is not what it pays you
Buying your own health coverage - what the three doors actually are
What a working household with a child can claim
Cash tips, reported income, and what documentation buys
Chair rental agreement - the terms that matter
Employer match, vesting, and the threshold you have to compute
Which household had the highest take-home? Which had the most left at month's end? Are they the same?
If any household bid wage away to win a One seat posting: was it worth it, and how would you have known at the time you bid, rather than now?
Two teams paid different amounts for the same thing this month: getting to work. Find the biggest gap in the room and explain where it came from.
Which financing option had the lowest monthly payment, and which cost the least in total? Were they the same option?
Tier A cost the most every single month, and nobody's shock card cared which tier you held until it landed. So was buying it a mistake?
If this class made any loans, look at the rates. No names. Would you have taken that loan? Would you have offered it? If nobody lent, why not?
In one future, the "One company" box beat every other box. Does that make putting money in it the best decision?
Who got the employer match, and what did it cost them to get it?
If your seat took cash tips: what did reporting them cost each month, and what did it buy? If it cost your household more than it bought, say so and say why.
Your team was dealt a hand you did not choose. Name one thing your hand made easy and one thing it made expensive.
Some households qualify for money they have to KNOW ABOUT in order to receive. Did anyone here, and what happens to the households that do not work it out?
You are eighteen months from every one of these decisions. Which one are you going to get wrong, and what will you do differently?
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