Oakton High Student Launches MoneyQuest Game To Boost Financial Literacy

OAKTON, VA — Rishab Nanduri, a 17-year-old junior at Oakton High School, has launched a new interactive platform called MoneyQuest to help students master personal finance. He launched the game on April 1 to coincide with the start of Financial Literacy Month.

Nanduri, a lifelong Northern Virginia resident, developed the game after participating in a personal finance challenge through DECA, a business competition series. He found existing study resources for the topic to be uninspiring.

"It’s almost like you’re kind of reading through a lot of notes and memorizing them," Nanduri said. "I wasn't able to find some really engaging and fun ways to learn about it on a high level".

MoneyQuest is designed to bridge the gap between academic standards and student engagement. While Fairfax County Public Schools include personal finance in its curriculum, Nanduri noted that many students struggle to stay interested. According to Nanduri, Gen Z nationally could only answer 38 percent of financial literacy questions correctly.

The MoneyQuest platform uses an outer space theme, featuring a "Star Wars" style opening crawl and eight different "planets" that represent critical money skills.

Nanduri modeled the mechanics after the popular quiz platform Kahoot! The game includes:

• Competitive Leaderboards: Students can compete against friends for high scores.
• Mini-Games: Interspersed between quizzes to maintain interest.
• Standardized Curriculum: Content is aligned with national standards from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Council for Economic Education.

Although Nanduri built the platform himself, he registered MoneyQuest as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to ensure the resource remains free. His priority was to remove "friction" for students who want to learn.

"I wanted something where as many students who want to learn about financial literacy as possible get it as easily," he said.

In its first week, the game saw nearly 70 plays, with some students completing the entire curriculum in a single session.

Nanduri plans to scale the project by recruiting volunteers to help with upcoming workshops, reach out to local schools to expand the game's user base, and hosting events with prizes for winners to further encourage participation.