Simulate a Bank Account for Financial Literacy
Financial literacy is easier to teach with something students can look at than with a worksheet describing it. LarpBank simulates a full bank account - checking, savings, credit, transactions, and a debit card - with every number fictional and every scenario under the instructor's control.
Personal finance is one of those subjects that's genuinely hard to teach in the abstract. A worksheet showing "Account A has $500" doesn't build the same intuition as watching a balance actually change after a transaction, or scrolling through a transaction history and sorting spending into categories. The obvious alternative - using a real bank account in front of students - isn't something any instructor should do, for privacy and safety reasons alone.
LarpBank sits in the gap between those two options: a fully fictional bank account that behaves like a real one, with nothing behind it that could expose anyone's actual financial information. It's the same simulation built for LARP and tabletop roleplay, repurposed for a classroom instead of a game table - the underlying account, transaction, and transfer mechanics are identical either way.
Why a simulation beats a worksheet or a real account
A worksheet can describe what a negative balance looks like; it can't make a student watch one happen. A real bank account solves that, but introduces exactly the risk an instructor shouldn't take on - a real account number, a real balance, and real transaction history displayed in front of a room. LarpBank's local-only, zero-network design (the same architecture that makes it safe for a LARP table) means there's no student data, no login, and no real financial information anywhere in the exercise - just a convincing interface with numbers the instructor sets.
What it can demonstrate
Account types and their rules
Checking and savings accounts stay positive; credit accounts can carry a negative balance. Setting up one of each and walking through what "in the red" actually looks like on a statement makes the concept concrete instead of abstract.
Reading a transaction history
LarpBank seeds 60-120 transactions per account across 90 days, spread across categories like Groceries, Dining, Utilities, and Subscriptions. Reviewing a real-looking history is a natural entry point into a budgeting exercise.
How transfers actually move money
Run a live transfer between two accounts and show the paired pending transactions it creates on both sides - a clean, visual way to explain double-entry thinking without the term ever coming up.
What a credit balance means
Set a credit account to a negative balance and use it to talk through interest, minimum payments, or debt in general terms, with a number on screen instead of just in a lecture.
Basic investing and crypto concepts
LarpCrypto and LarpStocks extend the same idea to holdings, price, and percentage change - useful for an introductory unit on markets without any real money or real accounts involved.
A ready-made classroom exercise
A 15-minute budgeting walkthrough
Set up one checking account with a starting balance and let the class review its seeded transaction history. Ask students to categorize the spending, identify the largest category, and propose one change that would improve the month's balance. Then triple-tap the balance to apply their proposed change live, and look at how the number moves. It turns a static worksheet exercise into something the whole room watches happen in real time.
Setting it up before class
1. Create the accounts you need
One checking, one savings, and one credit account is usually enough to cover account-type and credit concepts in a single session.
2. Let the seeded history do the work
New accounts already come with realistic transaction history - no need to manually build a dataset before class.
3. Use triple-tap live, in front of the class
Set any balance to an exact teaching number on the spot, rather than pre-scripting every value in advance.
4. Point students to LarpCrypto for individual practice
The free web app lets students experiment with a portfolio on their own device without installing anything.
For the investing-concepts portion, LarpCrypto runs in any browser with nothing to install, which makes it the easier of the two to hand to a full classroom of students at once. See the full feature list for what else is available in the suite.
All data is fictional and stored locally.
Bring a bank account into the classroom
LarpBank is free to download on iOS. Every account and transaction is fictional, local, and instructor-controlled.
Download Free — iOSFrequently asked questions
Is this safe to use with a classroom or with minors?
Yes - LarpBank makes no network calls, requires no account beyond a first name, and never touches real financial information. Every balance, transaction, and account shown is fictional and stored only on the device running the app.
Do students need their own device and their own app?
Not necessarily. The most common classroom setup is one instructor device demonstrated to the class or passed around for hands-on exercises. Students who want their own portfolio to experiment with can use LarpCrypto, the free web app companion, on any browser without installing anything.
What financial concepts can this actually demonstrate?
Account types and their rules (checking and savings stay positive, credit can carry a negative balance), reading a transaction history with categories and merchants, how transfers move money between accounts, and - using LarpCrypto - basic portfolio concepts like holdings, price, and percentage change.
Is there a cost for classroom use?
LarpBank is free to download, with balances capped at $10,000 on the free tier - more than sufficient for teaching exercises. No purchase is required to demonstrate any of the concepts below.