A tight month

How it works

1. Choose who you are: Mirjam, Henk, Noor, or Ria with Kwame. Each with their own life and an example budget, divided over pots.
2. Every week something lands on the table: letters, bad luck, work, people and sometimes a windfall. Pick up what you want to deal with and choose what you do. Every choice costs money, headspace, or both.
3. Keep an eye on the two meters: Money (your pots) and Headspace (a head that gets fuller). What you leave sometimes gets worse: a letter becomes a demand for payment.
4. You can ask for help: from a care worker, someone you know or the food bank. That costs something too.
5. After four weeks you see a review: what you chose, the meters as lines, questions to think about and tips for your work. You can print it.

Scarcity changes the game

Money worries take up room in your head. That leaves less for planning, reading and keeping going. This is called the capacity to act (in Dutch: doenvermogen): being able to do what you know is right. When money is tight, you mainly look at what has to happen now. This is called tunnel vision. In the game you notice it like this:

• Blurring letters. The fuller your head, the more blurred the letters get, and words drop out.
• Tunnel vision. With a very full head you no longer see choices for later straight away: a payment plan, looking into something, asking for help.
• Less room. You can only take on a few things each week. You have to choose what to leave.

Each effect says what happens and why. You can read a blurred letter slowly, and you can still look at a choice you do not see. That costs some headspace, just like in real life. You can also turn off each effect under Settings; the game still works.

For

For care workers, students, volunteers and teams who work with people on a low income.

With your team

Under Settings, choose With a team. One person operates the screen, the group joins in. After each week there is a question for the group, with space to write down what the group says. That goes into the review and onto the printout. Allow forty-five minutes to an hour. With Full screen, everyone can see.

Good to know

• The amounts are round example amounts.
• The rules are like the real ones, but simplified. For example, € 40 in collection costs is added after a demand for payment, and a fine goes up if you do not pay on time. In the game each pot is a separate envelope: a fixed cost only comes out of its own pot.
• The people are made up. Their situations are common, but they say nothing about who ends up in a situation like that.
• There is no time pressure. Nothing flashes. Everything works with the keyboard.
• Is money tight for you too, or does a lot of this feel familiar? Talk about it with someone you trust. The neighbourhood team or the debt help service of your local council can look at it with you.

Your data

Everything stays on this page, on your own device. Nothing is sent and nothing is saved in your browser. If you close or refresh the page, the month is gone.

• If you copy the review, the text is on your clipboard. Paste it wherever you like.
• Do you choose ‘Save as PDF’ when printing? Then the review is saved as a file on your device.

Sources

• Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR, 2017): Weten is nog geen doen. Een realistisch perspectief op redzaamheid (in Dutch; English title: Why knowing what to do is not enough) ↗ (external website)
• Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir (2013): Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Times Books. Published in Dutch as Schaarste. Hoe gebrek aan tijd en geld ons gedrag bepalen. Maven Publishing.