Section: InvestingDifficulty: BasicRound length: Under 3 minFreeNo sign-up
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moneygym.games
Complete game guide
A round of under three minutes on the one question a personal balance sheet asks: is this thing a resource you control, an obligation you owe, or neither? Eighteen cards arrive one at a time — the home you live in, the mortgage left on it, a refundable deposit, an unused credit limit, last month's pay — each with a figure on it. You tap one of three bins. Three chances, and a miss tells you at once which bin it belonged in and why. At the end you get two net worth figures: the real one, and the one your own filing produced. The distance between them is the lesson.
The goal
Eighteen cards in one round: seven assets, seven debts and four that do not belong on the sheet at all. Two of the four are flows — income or spending over a period — and two are things that are not economic resources, such as an unused credit limit or a credit score. Every round also deals one asset against its own debt (a home and its mortgage, a car and its car loan) and one cross-bin contrast (a card balance against the limit you have not drawn, or a prepaid balance against the part already used up). The round ends on the eighteenth card or when the third chance goes.
Controls and play
One answer per card: tap the bin it belongs in. There is no dragging anywhere in this game — a single tap files the card, which is also what makes it fully playable from the keyboard. Press 1, 2 or 3, or the left, down and right arrows, to file directly; Tab moves between the three bins and Enter or Space confirms. A freshly dealt card ignores input for a third of a second, so a double tap on the last card cannot answer the next one. A miss holds its explanation for about a second and a half, and a tap moves on sooner; the bonus clock stops while you read it.
Points and streaks
A correct filing scores 100 points before multipliers, weighted 1.3 for a middling card and 1.6 for a hard one. The multiplier rises half a step every three correct answers in a row, up to two and a half times, and a miss resets the streak and costs one of three chances. There is a 125-second bonus window worth 15 points for every whole second left, paid only if you file all eighteen; the window is derived from the time a slow reader needs to read every card and decide, so running out costs the bonus and nothing else. The grade is accuracy alone — file all eighteen correctly at any speed and you get the top grade.
Finishing and results
The round ends on the eighteenth card, or when the third chance goes. If the chances run out early, every card never dealt is counted as a miss at no further cost in chances, and the result page says how many were never dealt. The result page carries the sheet you built — assets, debts, true net worth — and beside it the net worth your own filing would have produced, with the difference between them. Every misfiled card is listed with the bin you chose, the bin it belonged in and the one-line reason, and a card on the two readings of a home closes the round.
Replay and progress
Every round is dealt from a seed, and the share text carries it: opening that link deals the same eighteen cards in the same order. "Play again" draws a new seed and drops the old link from the address bar. Leaving mid-round keeps the card you were on, the score, the streak, the chances and the time that was left; both clocks stop when the page is hidden and start again when it is back. If the cards have been revised since your record was written, the round opens fresh rather than recomputing your sheet with figures you never saw.
Language and context
The verdicts are the same in both languages, because all three accounting frameworks define an asset and a liability the same way — a present economic resource you control, and a present obligation to transfer one. The figures are not shared: the Chinese cards are written in yuan at local magnitudes and the English ones in dollars, so one seed deals the same eighteen concepts in the same order in either language with different amounts on them. That is also why switching language mid-round deals a new round instead of recomputing your sheet: your saved progress is kept per language.
This round covers
01An asset is a resource you control›
Not a thing you like, and not a thing that pays you. The test is a present economic resource under your control, which is why a car at its resale value is an asset even while it loses value, and why the home you live in is one too.
A present obligation to hand over an economic resource. Money owed to a friend with nothing signed is a debt; so is an unpaid bill for power already used, and interest that has accrued but has not been billed yet.
Source: IFRS Conceptual Framework 2018
03The home and the mortgage are two cards›
A balance sheet does not net them off. The home goes in at what it is worth, the mortgage balance goes in as a debt, and net worth is the difference. Filing the mortgage as an asset moves your net worth by twice its balance — which is exactly what the two figures at the end show.
Source: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances 2020
04Income is a flow, net worth is a stock›
This month's pay, last month's rent and the money spent on a trip are figures for a period. Net worth is a photograph taken at one moment. What is left of your pay appears on the sheet as cash; the pay itself never does.
Source: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances 2020
05An unused credit limit is not an asset›
Drawing on it adds cash and an equal debt in the same movement, so net worth does not change. The part already spent is a debt; the part still available is not a resource you control. A pre-approved offer you have not taken is the same case.
Source: FASB Concepts Statement 8 chapter 4, 2021
06A credit score and a degree never reach the sheet›
Both raise what you can borrow or earn, and neither is a resource you can hold or transfer, so neither has a place on a balance sheet. They are the two cards in this game with no figure at all, and that is the reason why.
Source: FASB Concepts Statement 8 chapter 4, 2021
Questions people ask
Is the home you live in an asset or a liability?+
On a balance sheet it is an asset, and the mortgage on it is a separate debt. That is how every net worth calculation works: the home goes in at its value, the loan goes in as what you owe, and the difference is yours. The popular line that a home is a liability comes from a cash-flow reading — it asks which things pay you every month rather than which things you control — and this game judges by the balance sheet, because that is the reading net worth is built on. Both readings are explained on the result page.
Why isn't my salary on the balance sheet?+
Because it is a flow and a balance sheet holds stocks. Pay, spending, interest earned over a year and a premium paid for the year are all figures for a period of time. A sheet is a photograph of one moment: whatever is left of your pay shows up as cash in the bank, and the pay itself does not appear. Confusing the two is the single most common mistake this game is built around.
Is an unused credit limit an asset?+
No. If you draw 1,000 of it you gain 1,000 in cash and owe 1,000, so your net worth is unchanged — which means the undrawn limit cannot have been a resource you held. The balance you have already spent is a debt and goes on the sheet; the headroom does not. The same goes for a pre-approved loan offer you have not accepted.
Is a car an asset if it loses value every year?+
Yes. Depreciation changes the figure, not the bin: you put the car in at what it would sell for today. The car loan is a separate card on the other side of the sheet. A car worth 14,500 with 9,800 still owed on it adds 4,700 to your net worth, and filing either card in the wrong bin is how that number comes out wrong.
How is the second net worth figure worked out?+
It is your own sheet. Every card you filed as an asset is added, every card you filed as a debt is subtracted, using the figure printed on the card and your first answer for it — a correction never happens, because the point is where your judgement landed. The real figure is the same sum with every card in the bin it belongs in. The difference is therefore made entirely of the cards that went the wrong way, and the review below lists them.
Does a shared link deal the same eighteen cards?+
Yes, as long as the cards have not been revised since. The link carries the round number, which fixes which eighteen concepts are dealt and in what order — the same in both languages. The figures differ by language, because each bank is written at the magnitudes of its own market, so your saved progress is kept separately per language and switching language deals a new round rather than recomputing your sheet.
