Level 0 · Orientation
Here's a number that should be famous: about 4 in 10 American adults could not cover a $1,000 emergency from savings. Not because they're bad at math. Because the margin between what comes in and what goes out is thin, and emergencies don't schedule themselves.
You'll get a random life: a job, a paycheck, bills, a savings balance, a credit card, and a family. Then your transmission dies — a real repair with a real price. Four doors can produce the money: your savings, your family, your credit card, and the quick-cash store. You'll run the honest math on all four, sign for one, and then live with it while life keeps happening.
Same bill, four doors. The difference between the cheapest and the most expensive is not 10%. It can be forty times the cost. Finding that out now, in here, is the assignment.
What you'll walk out with
| 1 · Your life — roll your job, take-home pay, bills, savings, credit, and family | random |
| 2 · The margin — what's actually left each month, and what a real cushion looks like | 2 checks |
| 3 · The breakdown — the tow, the quote, and whether you get a second opinion | 1 check |
| 4 · Door 1 & 2 — pay cash, or borrow from your people | 2 checks |
| 5 · Door 3 — the credit card, and what "minimum payment" actually means | 3 checks |
| 6 · Door 4 — the quick-cash store, where the fee never sleeps | 3 checks |
| 7 · The showdown — four doors priced side by side. Sign one. | 1 check |
| 8 · Life keeps happening — two events hit the door you signed | 1 check |
| 9 · Report — printable, gradeable | turn in |
Level 1 · Your life
Your job sets your paycheck. Your bills set your margin — the only money that can respond to an emergency. Your credit score sets what borrowing costs you, your savings decide whether you even need to borrow, and your family is either a door or a wall. None of it is chosen. All of it is priced.
Ready when you are
One roll. No rerolls, no do-overs, no trading for an easier life.
Level 2 · The margin
Take-home pay minus the bills that must be paid — rent, utilities, food, insurance, the phone — leaves your margin. That's the entire emergency response budget. Every door you're about to look at is really a machine for borrowing against future margin.
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Level 3 · The breakdown
Halfway to work, the car shudders, revs without moving, and rolls to the shoulder. The dashboard lights up like a pinball machine. It's the transmission, and the transmission is the second most expensive thing in the car.
The dealership already quoted you. An independent shop will look at it for free — but the tow and the wait cost you two more days of paying for rides. This is the first money decision of the emergency, and you're making it stressed, on the shoulder of the road. Welcome to how these decisions actually get made.
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Level 4 · Door 1 & 2
Before anyone charges you interest, run the two doors that don't have a rate sheet: your savings account, and your family. Both are cheaper than any lender. Neither is free — one costs you your cushion, the other costs you something harder to put on a spreadsheet.
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Level 5 · Door 3
Swiping is painless, which is the product. The price is the APR — rent on the balance, charged every month, on whatever's left. And the bank's suggested "minimum payment" is engineered to keep that balance alive as long as legally possible.
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The minimum is a trap, not a plan. Slide to what you'd actually pay each month — remember, it has to come out of your margin, every month, alongside everything else that can go wrong.
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Level 6 · Door 4
No credit check. Money in minutes. Everyone qualifies. The quick-cash store is the only door that never locks — that is the business model — and it's open precisely because it's the most expensive legal way to borrow money in America.
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Here's the mechanism, and it deserves your full attention: every two weeks the fee comes due. Pay the fee and the loan "rolls over" — the debt itself does not shrink by one cent. You only escape the day you show up with the entire amount in one hand. Drag the timeline and watch what the fees do.
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Level 7 · The showdown
The bars below are what each door charges you for the money over the next 12 months — on top of the repair bill itself, which everyone pays. Locked doors are locked by your life, not by your choices, which is exactly how it works outside this game. Tap an open door to sign for it, then defend the call in writing.
Name the number that decided it, and name what it costs you that isn't money. Two or three sentences.
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Level 8 · Life keeps happening
Two random events from the next few months. Watch the part that matters: the same event costs a different amount depending on which door you signed. That difference is the compounding — the door you chose keeps choosing for you.
The next three months, compressed
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Level 9 · Turn it in
This is what you hand in. Print it, or copy the grade summary line.