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Description

From Scouts UK web-site.

Balance your bills, handle unexpected costs, and watch how your decisions impact your household budget.

Resources

A4 paper https://prod-cms.scouts.org.uk/media/flapbmgt/bill-busters-recording-sheets.pdf
Pens or pencils
Something to represent money, such as sticks, stones or Monopoly money
Printed copies of the Bill Busters challenge cards https://prod-cms.scouts.org.uk/media/b2cimnwf/bill-busters-challenge-cards-1.pdf
Cones for marking stations (optional)

Instructions

Set up five stations around the meeting space: Home, The Bank, Electricity Bills, Water Bills and Surprise Expenses.
An adult volunteer, such as a parent or carer, could be based at each station.
Write or print out the cards. To keep things organised, you could use a different colour paper for each set.
Shuffle the cards in each set, so they’re in a random order.

Running this activity

Ask if anyone know what credit or debit is. You can use the explanations on this page. A simple explanation is:

Credit: Credit is borrowing money to pay for something, such as paying on a credit card. For example, if you don’t have enough money to pay for a car repair, you can borrow the money from the bank on a credit card, but you'll need to pay it back. You may also need to pay interest or a fee to use credit.
Debit: Debit is using your own money to pay for something. If you pay for something with a debit card, you're using the money you already have in your bank account.
Prepaid cards: Prepaid cards are different to credit or debit cards. You load money onto the card and you can only spend what's on the card. There might be fees you have to pay to use or own a prepaid card.

Ask everyone to get into teams.

Explain that each team will be a ‘household’ and they’ll need to manage their household finances.

The teams will move through the different stations, choosing cards, deciding how to manage their money and trying not to get into debt.
Explain that the game will be played over three rounds, with each round representing a month. The winning team will be the team who ends the game with the most money in debit.

Round 1
Teams start at the Home station and pick a card to find out their starting balance.
Next, they go to the Bank to collect their money.
Then they visit each station (water bill, electricity bill, surprise expense), pick a random card to see what they owe, and choose to pay by debit or credit.
They keep track of what they spend and what they still owe.
If they can’t afford a bill with their debit amount, they must use credit before moving on.
After all stations, they return to Home to total up their spending. If they’ve used credit, they may be in minus numbers.
Then, start round 2.

Round 2
Teams return to the Home station and pick another money card.
They should then go back to the bank to get their second payment. They add this to any money left from round 1.
Then, they visit the same three stations again and pay the bills again.
At the end, they should work out their savings or loss for round 2.

Round 3
For Round 3, repeat the same process again.
At the end, they should work out their savings or loss for round 3. This will be the final amount.
Finding out the winner
Gather everyone back together to compare how teams got on.
Ask each team how much money they have, either in credit or in debt.
Whoever ended up with most money after all the bills were paid, wins.

Introducing Investing
At the end of each round, teams may choose to invest.
They can invest £50 a round.
This money is locked until the end of the game — they cannot use it to pay bills later.
For every round it stays invested, it earns £10 in interest.

At the end, teams receive their original investment plus any interest earned.

This helps young people explore long-term thinking and weigh up risk vs. reward. Can they grow their savings, or will short-term needs catch them out?

Reflection
This activity was about managing money. You dealt with paying bills and unexpected costs, choosing when to use your own money (debit) or borrow (credit), and saw how these choices affected your team’s budget. What was your team’s plan for handling money? Did it change during the game?

This was a bit like managing your income or salary and outgoings each month. There’s lots of hard decisions. Were you surprised with how much or how little you had left at the end? How do you think managing money at home is different in real life? What other bills might you need to pay, such as rent/mortgages or council tax?

You really had to work as a team. How did you make a decision? Did everyone get to have their say and did you listen to each other? Which choices helped your team the most? Which didn’t work? Would you do anything differently if you played again or in real life? What did you learn?

Tags

• Budget
• Money Skills

Badge Links

• Money Skills - Saving & Borrowing