How to play Make Rent
Make Rent is a one-month budget game. You work a full-time job on the minimum wage, you rent a room in a shared home, and rent is due on the 1st. Each of the 30 days brings one card, a small real-life moment such as a team lunch, a cracked phone or a friend's birthday dinner, and you choose one of two answers by tapping it or swiping the card left or right. On rent day the game checks whether the money in your account covers the rent.
Every choice moves up to three things: your balance, your energy and your mood. Spending usually lifts your mood, saving usually costs it, and extra work pays but wears you out. The cost of each choice is printed on its button, so you always know what you are spending.
The real numbers
The pay, the rent and the transit costs are real figures, not invented ones. In New York you earn the city's minimum wage of $17.00 an hour, about $2,330 a month after federal, state and city tax by our estimate. A room in a shared apartment costs $1,500 a month, close to SpareRoom's New York average of $1,511 for the first quarter of 2026, and the subway costs $35 a week, which is the OMNY seven-day fare cap.
In London you earn the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour, which applies from April 2026, or about £1,880 a month after income tax and National Insurance. A room in a flatshare costs £1,000 a month, in line with SpareRoom's inner-London average of £1,002 for the third quarter of 2026, and the Tube costs £44.70 a week for a zones 1–2 Travelcard.
The daily cost of food and basics, your share of the bills, the money you start the month with and every card are our own estimates. They are tuned so that both cities are about equally hard, which keeps the game about your choices rather than about which city you pick.
Energy, mood and the two ways a month goes wrong
Workdays drain your energy and your mood, and weekends give some of both back. If your energy hits zero, you burn out and call in sick for two days, and those shifts are unpaid. If your mood hits zero, you have a rough night and stress-spend on takeaway and online shopping. Both cost far more than they look, so a month spent only saving money tends to fail as surely as a month spent only having fun.
Paydays, overtime and side hustles
You are paid every two weeks, on day 3 and day 17, for ten shifts each time. Extra work arrives as cards: covering a Saturday shift pays time and a half in New York and your normal rate in London, and staying two hours late adds a little to your next paycheck. Side hustles such as an evening of food deliveries or helping a neighbour move pay cash on the spot. All of them cost energy, so the trick is to take them when you have energy to spare.
Tips for making rent
Spend a little to save a lot. A cheap treat when your mood is low is far cheaper than the stress-spending that hits when it reaches zero.
Watch your energy before saying yes to extra work. A Saturday shift is worth one and a half days' pay in New York, but a burnout costs two.
Deal with problems early. Some cheap answers come back later: a toothache ignored can turn into an emergency visit, and a cracked screen can spread.
Look at the payday counter. The balance always looks healthy right after payday. What matters is what is left when rent day comes.
Today's month and sharing your result
Each city has a new daily month every day, and everyone who plays it on the same day gets the same 30 cards, so you can compare results with friends. When rent day comes, the game gives you a receipt with your result and a calendar of your month in emoji, which you can share or copy. You can also play a random month at any time.
