Teacher Spotlight — Rhiannon Miller rewards her highest performers in a unique way On April 5, 2024 in Rhiannon Miller, a teacher in South Park, Pennsylvania, has used Budget Challenge for the past four years. Read how she rewards her highest performing students ..read more

Teacher Spotlight — Accounting Teacher Laura Abel On April 4, 2024 in Laura Abel, an accounting teacher in Kingwood, TX, has taught Budget Challenge in her classroom since 2015. We reached out to her to gain insight into how Budget Challenge is used to teach Personal Finance in her class. Here’s what she had to say ..read more

Feature Updates: Easier access to managing quizzes On February 20, 2024 in We've made a few updates to Teacher Home to make managing quizzes even easier ..read more

Credit unions know that effective financial education makes $ense! David Dawson and Lynn McCoy share their journey On September 16, 2022 in Credit unions have a mission to serve their community's financial needs. Schools have a mission to create financially capable young adults. As First Area Credit Union begins its fourth year of Budget Challenge sponsorship, COO Lynn McCoy and Swan Valley Michigan High School teacher David Dawson share how they are transforming lives through their joint efforts. Read about it in this week's blog post ..read more

On March 29, 2022 in Robin Salai, a Business teacher at Fairmont Senior High School in WV, who has been using Budget Challenge for several years, shares her vast experience with us. She started teaching the class with 22 students and since then her class size has almost tripled. Salai was even featured in the Times West Virginian last year for using our program in her Personal Finance course ..read more

Business Teacher Cindy Quaid — "Allow students to make errors so that they can learn" On March 23, 2023 in Cindy Quaid is the Business & Technology Department Chair and the Future Business Leaders of America Adviser at Santa Maria High School in Santa Maria CA. This is her 30th year teaching at her high school alma mater. She is a long-time user of Budget Challenge ..read more

On June 10, 2022 in 2022-2023 Budget Challenge is better than ever! We have updated our award-winning simulation and textbook and added new teaching tools and resources. Budget Challenge is the only program that teaches all 127 of the CEE/Jump$tart National Standards for Personal Financial Education. Our program is the most realistic and relevant available. And it is the only one that instills financial capability by letting students manage all the finances of an independent young adult in real-time for ten weeks while they attempt to accomplish important financial goals most adults ..read more

Parent Involvement Highlights with Anne Runkle On May 16, 2022 in Anne Runkle an Economics teacher at Charlotte Catholic High School, in Charlotte, NC, is an avid Budget Challenge user. She has been using the program since 2014. In that time our program has improved and changed. However, the importance and relevancy of parent engagement during the simulation and the bridge between home and school that Budget Challenge creates has remained the same. Anne shares her experience and the importance of parent involvement ..read more

Under the Hood with Dave Buten, Co-Founder and Co-CEO: The Thinking Behind the Trophies On August 30, 2022 in In this “Under the Hood” post, we will look at the trophies and the design thinking behind them. Before Budget Challenge had trophies, we sometimes received feedback indicating that students and teachers were uncertain about what to focus on or prioritize. While this might be a common sentiment in the adult world of personal finance, it was a clear sign that there was an opportunity to improve the simulation. The question was how best to focus on the essential personal finance behavior ..read more

Announcing a new engagement meter on Student Home! On September 28, 2022 in The Budget Challenge Engagement Score is a valuable measure of a student’s positive participation in the simulation. Students now can easily see their engagement on their Student Homepage immediately upon login ..read more