What financial decisions can you practice in Money Simulator?

Updated

Money Simulator lets you practice four broad areas of personal finance in a browser-based, retro-style sandbox: earning income through a career, planning for retirement with a pension, building savings, and taking on major purchases like a mortgage, property, and cars. It runs for free in your browser with no download required (version 0.11.1), so you can try these decisions without real money at stake. Treat it as a way to explore how choices connect, not as a prediction of your own outcomes — the site itself notes that nothing in life can be predicted with 100% accuracy and that you should not base real financial decisions on the simulation's results.

The four decision areas

Area What you can do What it lets you explore
Career Get a job and follow a career path How income changes over time and what a career track implies for the rest of your plan
Retirement Open a pension and plan for retirement How long-term planning interacts with the income you earn
Savings Open savings accounts and save How regular saving builds up alongside other commitments
Major purchases Apply for mortgages, purchase properties, buy and sell cars How large, financed purchases affect your overall position

How the areas connect

The value of the simulator is that these decisions are not isolated. A career path sets your income; that income feeds savings and pension contributions; and a mortgage or car purchase competes for the same money. Because it is a sandbox, you can make a choice, see the impact, and then try a different path — which is the point of the "see the impact of your financial decisions" framing.

For example, if you want to understand whether buying a property fits alongside retirement saving, you could take a job, open a pension and a savings account, then apply for a mortgage and purchase a property, and observe how the combined commitments play out. The same applies to buying or selling a car as a recurring large expense.

What it is and is not good for

  • Good for: getting a feel for how income, saving, pensions, and big purchases interact; experimenting with different sequences of decisions at no cost; a low-pressure way to start thinking about long-term planning.
  • Not for: forecasting your actual finances. The site explicitly warns that the simulation cannot mimic real life with full accuracy and should not be the basis for real financial decisions.

Practical notes before you start

  • It is browser-based, so no installation is needed; the site lists it as free to play.
  • The current version shown is V0.11.1, and release notes are available from the site — useful if features change between versions.
  • Player feedback quoted on the site is positive but informal ("really fun," "actually good," "a lot of potential"), which fits its status as an early-version sandbox rather than a finished planning tool.

If your goal is to explore how a career, pension, savings, and major purchases fit together before committing real money, Money Simulator gives you a free, no-download space to try those combinations — just keep its own caveat in mind and use it for learning, not for real financial planning.