A money game for your lesson
Own Your Month is a free financial literacy game that runs in the browser. Each turn is one month: pay comes in, bills go out, offers tempt, and students decide. They see the results in their own numbers straight away, and those numbers give the class something real to talk about.
What students practise
- Reading a monthly cash flow and saying whether a purchase makes it better or worse.
- Telling an asset that pays from a cost that only looks like one, such as a car on credit or a pile of subscriptions.
- Seeing compound interest work both ways: an ETF that grows and a debt that grows against you.
- Spotting traps: stacked pay-later plans, lifestyle creep after a raise, hype coins, "0 % interest" small print.
- Deciding how big an emergency fund should be, and why it beats a risky bet when something goes wrong.
The game teaches through consequences rather than lectures: students make a choice and then live with it for a few months.
How it fits a lesson
- First Money: 24 months, for about 13 to 18. Designed to take about 30 to 40 minutes.
- Starter Life: 60 months, for about 18 to 30. Designed to take about 60 to 90 minutes.
These times are design estimates; we have not yet timed them with classes. Each student or pair plays on their own device against computer players.
Running a session
- Before the lesson, open the demo on a school device and check that it loads. Nothing to install, no accounts, no e-mail addresses.
- Same deal for everyone. Each game starts from a seed. Give the whole class the same seed, mode, character, difficulty and number of computer players, and everyone is dealt the same cards and market news. Different results then come only from different decisions.
- Play. First Money on Easy is a gentle start. Ask students to open Show details before they accept an offer.
- Talk. Compare Freedom meters and districts at the end. Good questions: Which offer did you regret? When did your cash flow turn negative? What did the emergency fund save you from?
What to know before you start
- The demo is in English for now. Prices are in Czech crowns and based on Czech data.
- The demo does not save yet. Plan to finish a game in one sitting: closing the tab ends it.
- There is no teacher account or class overview. Results stay on each student's screen, so you see them when students show or tell you.
- The content is a draft. Some numbers are still being checked, and texts may change.
Students' data
The game needs no sign-up and has no analytics, ads or cookies. Game data stays on the device, and the demo does not save it at all. This website uses no analytics and sets no cookies.
Please note
Own Your Month is an educational game, not financial advice. Prices, wages and rates are simplified snapshots of the Czech economy.