Budgeting Basics

Time: One 45-minute class period

Essential Question: How does planning your budget affect spending decisions you make moving forward?

Overview: Students play Cryptid Kimber, a road trip-themed budgeting game.

Introduction: In Cryptid Kimber, students play as Kimber Wildebeest, an aspiring cryptozoology influencer. Before the trip begins, students make a series of fixed expense decisions — choosing their phone plan, car insurance tier — and a series of variable expense decisions (gas, food, miscellaneous). Their plans are then put to the test as they encounter decision points shown as literal forks in the road. The connection between the budget and the road trip is mechanical, not cosmetic: a weaker phone plan can lock the player out of certain scenario options entirely, and going too far over-budget will end the game.

The key learning outcome is budgeting is a plan for allocating income. It comes with trade-offs and staying on-budget requires discipline. 

Objectives: The student will…

• Tell the difference between fixed and variable expenses in a budget
• Divide a weekly income across different spending categories
• Explain how early budget choices affect what you can do later
• Describe how having a savings goal can help you spend less along the way

Standards: Jump$tart Coalition National Standards for Personal Financial Education (2021)

Spending:

• 4-3: When people make a decision to use money for a particular purpose, they incur an opportunity cost in that they cannot use the money for another purpose.
• 8-1: Creating a budget can help people make informed choices about spending, saving, and managing money in order to achieve financial goals.
• 12-1: A budget helps people achieve their financial goals by allocating income to necessary and desired spending, saving, and philanthropy.

Saving:

• 4-1: When people save money, they are choosing not to spend money today to be able to buy something in the future.
• 4-2: A savings plan is a plan for setting aside money to pay for a future need, goal, or emergency.
• 8-1: People save money for many different purposes, including large purchases such as cars and homes, education costs, retirement, and emergencies.

Suggested Pacing:

Open with the Essential Question as a brief think-pair-share: "If you knew you had X dollars for the month, what would you lock in before you started spending any of it?" (5 min)

Students play Cryptid Kimber independently or in pairs. Ask them to pay attention to which expenses they can control throughout the game, and which ones they locked in at the start. (25–30 min)

Close with a debrief. Ask 2-3 students to share their final result (did they finish the game? Which ending did they get?) and one crossroads decision they wish they had made differently. Then open to the group: how did students with the same starting income end up in different places by the end of the game? (10 min)