Jessica, 16, is a librarian with a police-dispatcher husband, a toddler, a $1,700-past-due credit-card bill and $4,500 in monthly income.

Matthew, 17, is a married teacher. He and his truck-driver spouse make $4,400 a month, have one kid, a monthly $100 student-loan payment and $246 in total credit-card debt.

Both couples pay $150 a month for medical coverage. How do they make ends meet each month?

Welcome to "Mad City Money," a personal-finance exercise in which high school students are given a pretend job, a paycheck, a spouse (or not), maybe a couple of kids and a pile of debt. Their task: figure out if they can afford the lifestyle they desire.

For 35 students at Mesa Verde High School in Citrus Heights, Calif., it was a firsthand look at the adult world of bills, budgets and whether their paychecks will cover a three-bedroom house, designer clothes and a Mercedes in the garage.

For three hours, they were given a paper debit card and set free to crisscross the gym, stopping at eight stations to make lifestyle choices — from cars to clothes to day care to whether to buy or rent a home.

"It's a safe environment to make mistakes," said Shannon Heaps, financial-literacy coordinator for SAFE Credit Union, which sponsored the Mad Money event. "If they buy a big, new car, they might not be able to buy (designer clothes)."

Heaps, who has organized similar events at other high schools, said, "They're not going to learn from someone giving them a lecture: ‘You've gotta save your money.' This is hands-on and it lets (teens) learn from their mistakes."

At every stop, the students — mostly juniors and seniors — had to make multiple, often tempting choices: the new SUV or the used sedan. Weekly fast-food trips or $40 dinners out. Even whether to spend $12 — or $80 — a month on takeout coffee.

Each had a paper debit card used to "pay" for their monthly lifestyle picks. Adding to the mix, an adult "fate fairy" circulated, handing out slips with unexpected good or bad news: a $300 flat-tire repair, a $100 grocery giveaway.

The ultimate goal: To wind up with no more than $100 in their checking accounts. Anything beyond that was assigned to long-term savings or paying down debts.

"We're doing a disservice if we do not teach them personal finance," said Karla Branen, a business-academy teacher at Mesa Verde. "Starting their senior year, they're going to be bombarded with financial decisions, like pre-approved credit-card applications. If they don't know the realities, they can get themselves in serious trouble."

The adults working the stations (Really Realty, Mad City Mall, Gotta Eat!, etc.) were told to "upsell" the teens, trying to coax them into higher-priced products, just as the teens might encounter with any salesperson in the real world.

Some instinctively knew what to do. Matthew Thompson, the supposed teacher with the truck-driving wife, said his first stop was the credit-union table, where he paid off his $246 credit-card bill. Why?

"It's something my parents drilled into me: ‘If you have debt, pay it off and get rid of it soon.' So that's what I did," he said.

For his fictional family, Thompson also chose a used sedan for his wife, a bus pass to get to his teaching job, a $150 family clothes budget and just one or two fast-food meals a month.

His plan: Save the "mall" stop for last. "If I have anything left over, I can go wild."

About two hours in, the financial realities were starting to sink in. Some teens were already $600 or more in the hole on their monthly budget.

Jessica Campos, the "librarian," huddled with a girlfriend, assessing how they'd both wound up financially upside down.

"Now I'm finally understanding what my parents are always saying: ‘You have to decide if you really want it,' " Campos said.

And just like in real life, there was a cost to every choice. Trade in the SUV? It'll be $100 to return it. Downsize from the high-end, three-bedroom-and-den house? That'll be $100.

Events like Mad City Money, created by the Credit Union National Association, are designed to help students learn those hard lessons before they leave home.

"There's been a proliferation of these role-playing games. It's part of a change in financial education," said Karen Anderson, chair of the California JumpStart Coalition, an association of groups that provide financial literacy programs for K-12 students.

Contact Claudia Buck at cbuck@sacbee.com.