Financial Education for Everyone
Accessible financial education
FiscalPath teaches personal finance by putting you in the driver's seat — real decisions, real consequences, zero real-world risk. Live a whole financial life from first job to retirement. Free for everyone, no sign-up needed to play.
The Problem
Personal finance is one of the most important life skills — and one of the least taught. Whether you're a high schooler opening your first checking account or an adult trying to finally get ahead, good financial education should be accessible to everyone, engaging, and practical.
FiscalPath covers everything from the basics — budgeting, debt, needs vs. wants — to advanced topics like tax-advantaged retirement accounts, compound interest, and making your money work for you. Taught through simulation, not slides.
The goal is simple: build one of the most in-depth, practical fiscal simulators that exists — and make it accessible to everyone, forever. No paywalls, no sign-ups required, no catch.
What a $5,000 credit card purchase at 26% APR actually costs you over 20 years of minimum payments. Always pay your balance in full.
of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing. An emergency fund is the single best defense against a bad situation becoming a debt spiral.
Average time for an S&P 500 investment to double, historically. The best time to start investing was yesterday — the second best time is today.
Curriculum
Everything below is built and playable today. A full run covers ages 22 to 85 — first paycheck to required minimum distributions.
Track your income against fixed and flexible costs. Learn why every dollar needs a job — and practice building a real budget, month by month, inside the simulator.
The 50/30/20 rule and how your daily spending decisions shape your financial future.
Watch 26% APR compound in real-time. See what paying in full every month actually saves.
Roth versus Traditional, a taxable brokerage, HSAs, and the 59½ wall that decides whether you can retire early or merely afford to. Play past 65 and meet Social Security, required withdrawals, and the tax interactions where one dollar gets taxed three ways at once.
Why 3–6 months of expenses in savings is the single best financial safety net you can build.
Build skills on the job, earn certifications, tailor a résumé, and find out what changing employers really costs.
Fill in a W-4, read a real W-2, and file a return with FICA, deductions and a refund you allocate yourself.
Premium, deductible, coinsurance and the annual ceiling — the four numbers that decide what a plan actually costs. Discover that insurance loses money in a typical year, which is exactly why people skip it, and what happens the year they were wrong.
Down payments, PMI, property tax, and a roof that quietly ages toward the winter it gives up.
Depreciation, cost per mile, and the repair-or-replace decision — with a mechanic skill that changes the answer.
Hours are as scarce as dollars. A second job pays more and costs the evenings that made the week bearable.
Individual stocks, bonds and ETFs you actually pick rather than a single blended return. Expense ratios that visibly eat returns over decades, dividends, rebalancing, and what diversification does when one holding collapses — the layer that turns "invest early" from advice into a decision with a wrong answer.
What makes it different
Most financial literacy tools are quizzes with a budget attached. These are the choices that make FiscalPath behave differently.
The insurance screen shows four numbers and how many doctor visits a typical year holds at your age. No expected cost, no recommended plan. Working it out is the exercise; choosing is yours.
Roth and Traditional come out a genuine wash at equal tax brackets. Neither health plan wins the worst year. Because the numbers are real, the right answer depends on your situation.
Skipping maintenance at 30 is a failed furnace at 38. Not converting to a Roth at 60 is a forced withdrawal at 75. You feel decisions that don't pay off immediately — which is most of them.
2026 federal brackets, actual IRS contribution limits, real Social Security bend points and the real ACA subsidy cliff. What you learn transfers to the form you'll actually fill in.
Insurance really does lose money most years. The 4% retirement rule really does fail about a fifth of the time. You meet the actual trade-off, not a sanitised one.
A cheaper apartment forty minutes out costs four hours a week. Optimise purely for money and watch your wellbeing fall — then work out why.
The Simulator
Pick a career, set a monthly budget, manage debt and savings, and survive life's curveballs — all simulated month by month. No sign-up, no download, no cost.
For Educators
FreePurpose-built features for teachers who want to run FiscalPath as a classroom activity — with real oversight and structured learning outcomes.
See everything for teachersBuild and assign tailored scenarios to your class — set starting conditions, career paths, and difficulty to match your curriculum.
Define custom life events that fire at specific moments in the simulation, with guided prompts that make students stop and reflect.
Leave inline feedback on student decisions and open follow-up conversation threads to extend learning beyond the simulation.
Tag scenarios and triggers to specific financial literacy standards so every activity ties back to a measurable learning goal.
Track where every student is in their simulation, review their decisions, and export progress reports — all from a single teacher dashboard.
Every classroom tool, for every teacher and every student, with no seat limits and no per-student cost. Sign up and you are working in about a minute — nothing to approve and nobody to wait for. FiscalPath exists because financial literacy should not sit behind a purchase order.
Google Classroom and Canvas integrations are planned — assign scenarios and sync rosters without leaving your existing workflow.
What's coming
Actively planned, and shaped by what teachers and players ask for.
Vote on what gets built next at the Feedback Board.
Help shape what's next
Every suggestion on the feedback board is read. The built-in voting system is how new features get prioritized — the things that matter most to users rise to the top and get built first.
This is a solo project built because good financial education should be accessible to everyone. If it's been useful, a small contribution helps keep it going and growing.