For teachers

Running this with a class

What the course assumes, how long each part takes, how to collect thirty results without any of it leaving the room, and what is worth arguing about afterwards.

The short version

Modules
Seven, twelve parts, 40 to 50 minutes each
The whole course
About ten hours with the simulation, or 12 to 13 class periods
The simulation
One to two hours, or a week of short sittings
Accounts
None. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.
Network
Nothing is uploaded. A page already open keeps working, but moving between pages needs a connection.

Modules 1 to 5 build one idea each and the simulation assumes all five. Module 7 stands on its own and can be taught early if you need it to. Every part ends with written answers a student can download.

Setting the same life for everyone

Thirty students on thirty different lives is the right default: the comparison at the end is more interesting when the starting points differ. But if you want the class on one scenario, so that what differs is only what they decided, build the link here and hand it out. Anything you leave alone stays the student's choice.

Try it yourself

Setting a job overrides the deal. Normally a student is offered a handful of jobs rather than the whole catalogue, because nobody at eighteen picks from everything, and that constraint is most of Module 1. Naming the job removes it. Worth doing when you want one variable held still, worth not doing the first time they play.

Collecting the class

At the end of a run each student gets a single line summarizing how it came out. Have them read it out, drop it in a shared document, or paste it into a chat, then paste the lot in here. It runs in your browser and goes nowhere.

What is worth arguing about

The simulation is built so that the interesting conversation is not "who won". These are the questions it actually supports.

  • Two students with very different money ended with similar wellbeing. What did each of them buy?
  • Who stopped working earliest, and what did they give up between 18 and 30 to do it?
  • Find someone who took almost nothing. Ask whether they would live that life.
  • Whose life was changed most by something they did not choose? What does that tell you about planning?
  • Same life number, different outcomes: what actually differed?
  • Who left employer match money unclaimed, and what would it have been worth by 88?
The one to avoid. "Who did best" has no answer here, and the course spends seven modules explaining why two different lives cannot be ranked by adding their parts together. A student who notices that the question is broken has understood the material better than one who answers it.
Three companions: slides, answer keys and a planning guide. The slides are projectable and every figure on them is computed from the same model your students use, so you cannot end up presenting a number the course no longer believes. The guide covers what each part needs beforehand, what to cut when a period runs short, what students reliably get wrong, and which parts a substitute can run cold. 117 questions across eleven parts, with the answer and the reasoning behind each. They are read from the students' own pages when you open them rather than typed into a document, so they cannot fall out of step with the course. What follows is for the written answers, which have no key and are not supposed to.

Marking the written answers

The simulation deliberately does not score the four questions at the end of a run. Arithmetic can say what a decision cost and cannot say whether it was worth it, and a tool that graded those answers would be contradicting its own last screen. That leaves the judgment with you, so here is what a strong answer looks like.

If you have to put a number on it

Four points, holistic, built from the strong descriptions above: the band is set by how many of the four answers reach them. It is your tool and not the course's judgment, and the simulation still will not compute it.

It scores the writing, not the life. A run that went badly and is argued about well is a four. A run that ended with two million dollars, described in two sentences of statistics, is a two. If the number ever tracks the net worth on the screen, it is measuring the wrong thing, and the student will work that out faster than anyone.

Deliberately four points rather than five or ten. A longer scale invites splitting hairs over writing quality, which is not what is being assessed, and an even number denies you the middle that everything otherwise lands in.

What this does and does not claim

Worth reading before a parent asks, and worth telling students outright.

  • Measured: pay by occupation and by education (BLS), Social Security (SSA formula and current bend points), military pay and the pension formula (DoD), long-term care likelihood and duration (ACL), vesting schedules (IRS).
  • Assumed: every price, every wellbeing figure, the market return distribution, and which employer offers which benefit. All labeled as assumptions in the model files.
  • Not modeled at all: geography and cost of living, earnings by field of study, disability cover, and anything about deployment or injury on the military path. Geography and disability cover were both built and then removed, because every number in them was invented and a student had no way to interrogate the figure they were being shown. Health cover is still a choice, and it is the one insurance decision in the simulation.
  • Not a prediction. No figure here describes any individual, and the end screen says so.

Every model in the course is checked in the browser before it ships. The model checks page prints READY only when all of them pass, and the strategy sweep tests whether the simulation is worth playing at all.

The standards alignment maps every part against the six topics in the 2021 National Standards, including the three places this course will not satisfy a topic on its own. The glossary defines every term the course uses and lists the ones it never mentions.

Content you may want to know about in advance

Nothing here is gratuitous and all of it is treated as arithmetic rather than as drama, but it is better to know before a class than after.

  • Module 7 covers gambling and sports betting, as a proof that the arithmetic guarantees a loss. It carries the national problem gambling helpline and says plainly that for some people it stops being a choice.
  • The simulation can include moving in with a partner, having children, separation, job loss, ill health, needing long-term care, and enlisting. Any of these may arrive as a card.
  • Any of that can be switched off for a class from the scenario builder above, in six groups: partners and children, a marriage ending, ill health and care, bereavement, service life, and theft. The student's result line records what was off, so runs played with different decks are not compared as though they matched.