What Is Finance Park®?
JA Finance Park is an immersive, hands-on financial literacy experience where middle school students learn how to manage their personal finances and plan for their futures—making real-world decisions about careers, income, expenses, and long-term financial goals.
Before Arrival at JA Finance Park:
Students prepare in the classroom by:
Exploring career pathways and income potential
Learning how education impacts earning power
Understanding budgeting, saving, and spending decisions
Examining credit, debt, and financial responsibility
Identifying personal interests, strengths, and career goals
Through guided lessons, students begin to connect their academic choices today to their financial independence tomorrow.
At Finance Park:
Students enter a realistic financial simulation where they assume the role of an adult with a career, salary, and personal life scenario. As participants, they:
Build and balance a monthly household budget
Make decisions about housing, transportation, and insurance
Manage expenses such as groceries, utilities, and childcare
Allocate funds for savings, emergencies, and long-term goals
Adjust financial plans based on real-world constraints
Students must make thoughtful trade-offs—learning firsthand how financial decisions shape their quality of life.
With guidance from volunteer mentors and business professionals, students experience the challenges and opportunities of financial independence in a supportive, real-world environment.
The result:
JA Finance Park builds financial confidence, critical thinking, and long-term planning skills—helping students understand how education, career choices, and financial habits work together to shape their future success.
Thank you to our JA Finance Park Sponsors
Testimonials
“It’s incredibly important. Businesses have to participate. Businesses have to partner, because it builds resiliency in the community we serve. I can’t think of a better way to do it than though Junior Achievement”
Volunteers like you make a big difference in the lives of our JA Finance Park students. You can make an impact by spending your time with them and sharing your own stories and experiences.
Volunteer with us at JA Finance Park!
For more information on volunteering at JA Finance Park, please contact:
Thank you very much for volunteering your time to help students with their BizTown experience. If you are a parent volunteer, please review the Volunteer Toolkit provided by your child’s teacher. If you have any additional questions, please get in touch with your child’s teacher.
Deviney Haley | 813-625-1181 | Deviney.Haley@ja.org
Our JA Finance Park® program invests in youth now so they can navigate the financial waters in the future. An experiential, real-life simulation, JA Finance Park first provides a series of lessons in the classroom to middle school students where they learn about all aspects of personal finance including learning about balancing a family budget, interest rates, how education affects their earning potential, and how saving today can affect their future.
Then, students come to JA Finance Park at the Bill Poe Family JA Center to put their new knowledge into action. During this half-day experience, students assume randomly assigned family and income scenarios and visit businesses to gather information for their personal financial decision-making. They utilize banking services, purchase housing, transportation, insurance, furnishings, health care, and other expenses, as well as make investment decisions.
The JA Finance Park curriculum (both entry level and advanced) wraps up with a hands-on, completely virtual simulation that is supported by volunteers and educators. This new Virtual 2.0 simulation has been fully redeveloped, with a brand-new experiences and an updated look and feel. In the entry level simulation, students assume randomly assigned family and income scenarios and will gather information to make informed financial decisions. They utilize banking services, purchase housing, transportation, insurance, furnishings, health care, and other expenses, as well as make investment decisions. The advanced simulation for high school students will take a deeper dive, and allow them to make decisions on what they want their simulated future to look like. It will take them through numerous life stages, to experience what it is like to budget as a teenager compared to a retired adult. This hands-on experience lays a solid foundation for students’ future decision-making.
For more information contact:
Angelica Tobar
Manager, JA Finance Park
Email: Angelica.Tobar@ja.org
813-485-9618
Teachers
Where can middle school students be engaged in the real-life experience of creating and maintaining a personal budget? Where would they be asked to create a lifestyle budget that factors in health care, housing, transportation, home improvement, banking and loans, groceries, stocks, and utilities?
This will all happen at JA Finance Park where students study the concept of personal financial managements in the classroom and then apply them in a life-like business environment.
Volunteers
Each simulation day requires between 15-20 volunteers to assist in the visit.
We cannot run the JA Finance Park simulation without volunteers to supervise and assist the students, and by volunteering, you are making it possible for our schools to participate in the program!
As a volunteer, you will be assigned to one of the storefronts in JA Finance Park, where you will provide information about different budget items, assist the students in balancing their budget, and help them to stay on task and focus on their personal goals.
JA Finance Park volunteers do not need to have specific expertise and are encouraged to share real-world experience/advice to the students as they learn what it means to be a working professional.
The total time commitment is 5 hours, which includes a 1 hr training the morning of before the students arrive, where you will receive training on how to facilitate the students’ learning. We will go over what to expect and how to make the day successful for you as well as the students. During the day, you will receive a volunteer binder, with helpful checklists, FAQs, and troubleshooting tips.