Finance & Banking · Personal Finance

Rent vs Buy

US K-12 CTE personal-finance simulation: a 23-year-old in Boise weighs a $300 room, a $1,200 studio, and a $250k FHA-financed starter home across four rounds — horizon, lease math, mortgage math (DTI gate, FHA vs conventional, 30-yr vs 15-yr), and the 5-year showdown.

4 rounds Undergraduate English, Español

Preview

About this simulation

US K-12 CTE personal-finance simulation: a 23-year-old in Boise weighs a $300 room, a $1,200 studio, and a $250k FHA-financed starter home across four rounds — horizon, lease math, mortgage math (DTI gate, FHA vs conventional, 30-yr vs 15-yr), and the 5-year showdown.

Surfaces the down-payment-vs-Roth-IRA opportunity cost, the 4–7 year breakeven rule, and the behavioral discipline of actually investing the difference.

Who it is for

An introductory simulation that assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, designed for undergraduate courses. It also works in vocational and high-school programmes and in onboarding sessions.

How a session runs

  1. The instructor creates a session from the Eureka dashboard and invites the participants.
  2. Participants play 4 rounds. In each one they submit their decisions and the simulation calculates the results.
  3. The simulation can be run in English, Español.
  4. The instructor follows each participant's progress and results from the dashboard, and uses the class results for the debrief.

Decisions participants make

The decisions participants make during the simulation:

  • Realistic planning horizon in this city
  • Would you take a 30% raise that requires relocation?
  • Rental option for the next 12 months
  • % of monthly gap auto-routed to Roth IRA + brokerage
  • Target home price
  • Loan product
  • Your final move

What participants track

What participants follow on screen as the rounds go by:

  • Lifestyle Snapshot & Time Horizon
  • Round Outcome
  • Year-5 Net Worth — three scenarios, side by side
  • Decision Trail

Subjects covered

Designed for courses in Personal Finance.

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