Become the budgeting expert of Somerville! Three citizens will need your help to save for and buy an item or experience they want before summer ends. You'll need to budget each person's wants and needs while saving up for their goal in 4 weeks. Left Click to proceed through each citizen's dialogue as they share their story and goal.

Each week, they will come to you with the money they earned from their summer job. Help them budget that money to take care of all their essentials and maybe splurge on a want or two! When it's time to budget, you'll see a sheet on the right side of the screen showing the needs to be taken care of along with additional wants. Needs are always at the top of the sheet; take care of those first! If you have some extra money left over, you can indulge in a want. Try not to use up all their money, however. The money that is saved during the week will go into a piggy bank that saves up for the item or experience the citizen will want to buy at the end of the summer.

Each expense requires a certain amount of coins, indicated by the orange glow on the right of the need/want. Each gold coin represents $1. Click on the orange hole to automatically place a coin there.

After budgeting, some unexpected events may happen during the week. Your citizens may experience an emergency such as getting sick or needing to replace an item at home. When this happens, the citizen will use some of the money they planned to save to cover the unexpected expense.

The citizens may want to indulge in a want during the week. If they saved up some cash, they can use that to cover their want. If they don't have the cash on them, however, they may ask to break their piggy bank to use up their savings. If they do this, they'll lose all the money they saved up! So think carefully before saying yes to an unexpected want. If you say no, the citizen may be upset for a bit, so try to make it up to them the next week they come in by letting them indulge in a want.