PlayMoolah’s growing up, launches WhyMoolah to teach young adults about finance

Singapore-based financial literacy startup PlayMoolah has today launched a new mobile app that’s sort of a cross between The Game of Life and Cashflow, with a Singaporean twist.

The game, called WhyMoolah, takes an avatar through different stages of life, making financial decisions about buying a house, daily expenses, and marriage. Along the way, players get tips on the hidden costs of big-ticket purchases, budget balancing, and financial management.

Co-developed over six months with Singapore’s DBS Bank, the app is a statement about PlayMoolah’s broader aspirations of improving financial literacy and the finance industry. While it started out building games for kids and parents, WhyMoolah is its first app aimed at fresh university graduates. Since inception, the company had planned to reach all age groups.

The founders, Audrey Tan and Min Xuan Lee, call WhyMoolah a “life simulator” in that it mimics the decisions many young adult have to face.

The game prepares players for the real complexities of making financial decisions by training them with simplified scenarios. For example, while buying a house is a drawn-out process requiring leafing through dozens of webpages and hours of homework, the game whittles it down to a few screens while still presenting an accurate picture of how housing loans function in general, and how mortgages impact your spending power and daily decisions.

While the app only takes avatars up to age 39 for now, PlayMoolah plans to unveil two more expansions that will eventually bring players from graduation to the grave. It’s literally life flashing before your eyes.

“The app’s about mapping out choices and helping them project otherwise abstract consequences of their financial decisions,” says Lee at a press event announcing the launch. In other words, the impact of overspending can be felt in one sitting, rather than over months.

Lee shares that in one play-testing session involving a paper prototype, a tester wondered why she got herself into massive debt in-game. She later realized her parents have been funding her lifestyle. That made her more thankful for her parents help.

DBS in the mix

Min Xuan Lee (left) and Audrey Tan (center), co-founders of PlayMoolah, with Jeremy Soo, head of DBS’ consumer banking group, and Sharon Tan (far right), DBS’s head of customer service management in Singapore.

DBS’s decision to work with PlayMoolah came about because of a fit in both organizations’ shared goal of equipping young adults with financial knowledge and demystifying financial terminology, says Jeremy Soo, head of the bank’s consumer banking group.

With internet banking usage going up and footfall to retail outlets dropping as a result, the bank launched its Remix program as a means to reach out to youths before they step into their careers.

An app like WhyMoolah, and the accompanying Facebook community the startup’s trying to build, is a gateway to engage with the younger set.