Economics & Personal Finance · Interactive financial experiments
Money Mechanics
Work five interactive experiments: rebalance household spending, turn an interest engine, stress-test investments, follow loan payments, and reveal a tradeoff.
Learning goal & teacher directions
Learning goal: Use models, definitions, and calculations to explain inflation experiences, compound interest, diversification limits, loan costs, and opportunity cost.
- Complete each experiment before opening its evidence file. Students should change an input and explain what happened.
- The rates, households, portfolios, and loan offers are fictional model inputs. They are not current financial products or forecasts.
- Ask students to compare the model result with its limits. No student needs to share personal or household financial information.
Progress saves in this browser when browser storage is available. It is not a student profile. No names are needed. Use the feedback and closing questions to discuss the reasoning behind a decision.
Small choices.
Visible consequences.
Five rooms. Five financial claims to put under pressure. Change the model, inspect what happens, and close each case with the evidence that holds up.
Build two baskets
Two households. The same changing prices. Build two spending baskets whose cost increases differ by at least 2 percentage points.
0 tokens left to place · Use all 10 before running the model.
Ten tokens represent the whole budget. This invented three-price model illustrates weighting; it is not the actual CPI calculation. Remove a token from one category before adding it elsewhere.
The published CPI does not necessarily equal either household’s own change in living costs.
Complete the experiment above to open the evidence file.
Course connections
Reviewed NC references: EPF.CC.1.2
Voluntary national references: 15.M.3 · Saving 8-5b · Investing 12-6b
Compare the activity’s scope with your own course requirements. These connections identify practice opportunities; they do not establish full standards mastery or a match for every state.