Host Your Own Reality Fair!

Illustration of students visiting booths at a Reality Fair, including banking and credit union tables.
Prepare students for life after graduation through experiential learning. Banzai’s Reality Fair provides all the resources you’ll need for a successful event, completely free.
Sign Up

Use it as a capstone project or an engaging school activity.

Banzai’s Reality Fair challenges teens to navigate real-life financial scenarios as they create a profile based on income data in their state, then visit booths that challenge them to build a realistic budget.

Future Finder showing an Artist in Utah with an annual salary of $43,680 and a gross monthly income of $3,640.

Future Finder: Personalized Scenarios

The fair starts with a short digital tool that helps each student build a unique persona complete with an established income, credit score, and family setup.

By using state-level U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Future Finder matches salaries to chosen careers in that student’s state so that each persona’s budget is authentic and relevant to where they live.

Reality Fair floor plan with a registration table and color-coded booths for housing, utilities, credit cards, retirement, loans, health care, and more.

Interactive Booths

Students visit hands-on stations that mimic critical financial milestones and hurdles from securing housing and planning retirement to managing unpredictable “life happens” moments.

Three Reality Fair student workbooks fanned out.

Student Workbooks

To balance screen time with tangible engagement, teens track their progress by completing interactive activity pages in physical workbooks for every booth milestone they reach.

Four Life Happens cards: an emergency tire repair, a cracked phone screen, an unexpected check for savings, and a broken water heater.

Unforeseen Life Events

The “Life Happens” booth challenges students with financial surprises, teaching them to adapt budgets in real time and see firsthand the value of emergency funds.

A community partner volunteer talks with students at a Reality Fair table.

Community Partner Support

Thanks to local banks and credit unions, the Banzai Reality Fair and all other Banzai resources are 100% free for educators.

As community partners, these institutions fund printed workbooks and can assist with event coordination, volunteer recruitment, station setup, and staffing booths while bringing their personalized expertise.

A cafeteria full of students working through Reality Fair workbooks during the fair.

What Educators and Partners are Saying

“Students really enjoyed it and so many good conversations were sparked from it.” — High School Educator

“We’ve hosted other reality fairs in the past and this was one of the easiest.” — Banzai Partner

Get students off screens and into real life matters.

Login or Sign Up to access your free teacher account and reality fair.

Get It for Free

Frequently Asked Questions

  • How much time should I plan for gathering materials and event planning?
    We recommend starting to plan your Reality Fair two to three months in advance. This gives you time to teach prep lessons, coordinate with your community partner, and recruit volunteers. A complete planning timeline is provided in the free Facilitator’s Guide upon teacher account sign-in and included with your order.
  • What materials are included with the Banzai Reality Fair?

    The fair features a mix of printed and digital materials. They can be shipped directly to educators working with a community partner, or downloaded and printed straight from the Banzai Teacher Library.

    Physical Materials:

    • Facilitator’s Guide: Your complete resource for organizing, preparing, and managing logistics (1 reusable guide per fair).
    • Student Workbooks: Interactive workbooks for students to log decisions and complete booth activities (1 per student, available in English and Spanish).
    • Booth Captain Sheets: Pre-printed instruction sheets for volunteers staffing each station (1 set per fair, available in English and Spanish).
    • Life Happens Cards: A deck of 18 scenario cards used to simulate sudden financial windfalls and setbacks (1 set per fair).
    • Tabletop Booth Displays: Signage posters for every booth station.

    Digital Materials:

    • Future Finder Coach: The in-class digital tool used by students to generate their personalized financial persona.
    • Reality Fair Supplement: Downloadable planning checklists, budget templates, email/letter templates, and volunteer sign-in sheets.
    • Reality Fair Poster: Print and fill out the information on this poster to advertise the event to your students.
  • How long does it take to complete the fair?
    The Reality Fair is designed to take approximately three hours to complete, but that will vary depending on the number of students that participate.
  • Is the Reality Fair graded?
    We recommend grading based on workbook completion, booth participation, and pre/post-test scores rather than remaining budget balances. Because persona-difficulty varies based on occupation and family setup, final balances do not reflect individual student effort.
  • What size group does the fair work for?
    The Reality Fair is built to be flexible, meaning it will work equally well with 20 students as 200. The main thing to consider when scaling the size of your fair is how many volunteers are needed to help staff the booths as well the size of the room to ensure everyone can comfortably and safely congregate around each booth.
  • What grade level is the fair targeted for?
    While adaptable for middle school, the Banzai Reality Fair is primarily targeted for high school students in grades 8–12.