An economics teacher I knew used to have his students do a project. I don’t recall how they ended up with their jobs: I don’t know if each student selected one, if they were drawn out of a hat, or assigned. Each job had an average starting gross income. They may have also been assigned a pretend spouse and number of children.
The students had to determine first how much would be withheld from this salary for taxes, and so what the net income would be. From the net income, they had to determine a budget, and use information such as local real estate and rental guides to determine where they could afford to live and whether they could buy a home or needed to rent. They also had to figure out what sort of car they could afford to own, how much they would need to pay for food, whether they were going to save any money, how much was left over for entertainment, etc.
The project was quite eye-opening for some of the students - they had assumed that after graduation they would get a job and be wealthy, but very few of the “paychecks” went as far as most of the students had hoped.
Exactly. That sounds like an effective project. I’d like to see an entire math curriculum use real-life applications. Not just personal finance, either, but mathematics as it applies to many different careers. (I haven’t found one yet.)