Play · needs, wants & contentment
Needs vs. Wants Sorter
Updated 2026-07-27 · Sources: 1 · Concept: the first sort every budget rests on
Twenty things come up one at a time. Press Need or Want, fast, the way you would decide in a store. Some of them are easy. Some of them are not, and a few are genuinely arguable: for those, whichever button you press, you will get the same answer: it depends, with the reason why. That is not the tool dodging. Real money decisions are full of judgment calls, and knowing which is which is the skill worth having.
Predict first
Of the twenty everyday things coming up, how many do you think are true needs?
Pick one, or skip the prediction.
1 of 20
The need/want sort is the first thing every national financial-education standard teaches children, before budgeting, saving, or anything else; see the Spending strand of the 2021 National Standards for Personal Financial Education (CEE & Jump$tart, PDF). The classifications here are ours, argued in the feedback line, and the six judgment calls are deliberate: no authority can settle them for your household.
And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.1 Timothy 6:8
KJV. Paul is writing to Timothy about teachers who treated godliness as a way to get rich; one verse earlier he says godliness with contentment is great gain (1 Timothy 6:6), and one verse before that, that we brought nothing into this world. Food and clothing is where he sets the bar for 'enough', not a command to own nothing more, but a warning that the line between need and want sits far lower than advertising will ever admit.