Money Smart Lab
Work out pay, budgets, interest and loans before they come up in real life.
Money Smart Lab turns everyday money skills into short puzzles. The first levels start with hourly pay on a drawn time card, then add overtime at time and a half and yearly salary. Level 3 reads pay stubs, where Social Security at 6.2 percent and Medicare at 1.45 percent are taken out of gross pay, and Level 4 splits a monthly budget into needs and wants.
Later levels cover saving with simple and compound interest, credit card statements with a monthly interest charge and a minimum payment, and the total cost of a simple loan. Level 7 adds credit scores, insurance words, tax brackets and investing vocabulary. Numbers are chosen so answers come out exactly, and every rule a question uses is stated on the card.
What children practice
- Calculate pay from hours and an hourly rate, with overtime for hours over 40
- Find gross pay, deductions and take-home pay from a pay stub
- Sort expenses into needs and wants and read a monthly budget
- Compare simple interest with interest that compounds each year
- Work out one month of credit card interest and a minimum payment
- Find what a loan costs in total, how marginal tax brackets work, and the vocabulary of credit, insurance and investing
Levels
- Level 1: Hourly pay
- Level 2: Overtime and salary
- Level 3: Pay stubs
- Level 4: Budgets
- Level 5: Saving and interest
- Level 6: Credit cards and loans
- Level 7: Credit, insurance, taxes, investing
- Level 8: Course mix
How it works
- Eight levels follow the path from a first paycheck to loans and taxes, and the last level is a mix of everything.
- Rounds use choices, a keypad for dollar amounts or percents, tapping items, sorting into bins, putting steps in order and multi-step problems.
- Five correct answers and a short practice timer open the next level, so students cannot skip ahead.
- Dollar amounts and rates are printed on cards and in the pictures. Need a hint? gives three clues, and a correct answer comes with a short worked explanation.
Best for: A good fit for grades 9 to 12 in a life skills, economics or math course, and for teens who are about to take their first job or open a bank account.
Tip for parents: Look over a real pay stub or a savings account statement with your child and ask them to find gross pay, take-home pay and the interest earned. It makes the numbers feel real.
Questions parents ask
Does the game give investing advice?
No. Investing appears only as vocabulary and arithmetic, such as stock, bond, dividend and diversification. There are no real companies, no products and no predictions, and the game never tells a student what to buy.
Are the tax and interest rules realistic?
They are simplified so the math is clear. Each question states its rules, such as time and a half for overtime or interest on a card each month at one twelfth of the yearly rate, and all answers are exact.
How should dollar answers be typed?
Whole dollars are typed without cents, and amounts with cents use a decimal point. The keypad shows the dollar sign and the unit, and every answer is exact, so no rounding guesses are needed.
Ready to try it?
Money Smart Lab is free with a parent account. A parent adds a child profile, and the child's progress is saved.