READ THIS BEFORE
YOU READ THE SYLLABUS.
The syllabus below is real and it is finished. The materials that would let a teacher run it are not. No class has taken this program, so there is nothing on this page about results, and there will not be until there is something true to report.
One thing is written, printed and free to run this year: the Grade 2 mathematics course. If you want a program in a classroom in September, that is the one. Start there.
Grades 1–2
Does not run here
Grades 3–5
Designed
Grades 6–8
Designed
Grades 9–12
Designed
The eight weeks
WHAT IS ACTUALLY
IN IT.
The sequence is deliberate. Cash flow before budgeting, budgeting before compounding, and credit only after a student can already see what interest does over time.
MONEY FUNDAMENTALS
Income, expenses, assets and liabilities: the four words that sit under every financial outcome. Students learn to categorize, measure and act on each.
Covered
- Reading a paycheck
- Fixed and variable expenses
- Calculating net worth
- Cash flow basics
THE BUDGET BLUEPRINT
The 50/30/20 rule adapted to what a student actually has. They build a first budget from real numbers rather than a hypothetical salary.
Covered
- The 50/30/20 framework
- Zero-based budgeting
- Needs against wants
- A one-month budget simulation
COMPOUND INTEREST
The most powerful idea in personal finance, and the one most adults were never shown. Students run the numbers themselves, starting from their own age.
Covered
- Simple against compound interest
- The rule of 72
- Starting early against starting late
- Building a projection
CREDIT AND DEBT
How credit scores are built, what an interest rate really costs, and the arithmetic of a minimum payment. Taught before a student has ever held a card.
Covered
- How a credit score is calculated
- APR and the true cost of debt
- Borrowing that builds against borrowing that traps
- Establishing credit deliberately
INVESTING BASICS
Stocks, bonds, index funds and risk-adjusted return. Students build a mock portfolio in week five and follow it for the rest of the program, including when it falls.
Covered
- Stocks, bonds and funds
- Diversification and risk
- The case for index investing
- Building a mock portfolio
BUSINESS FINANCE
Revenue models, gross margin, acquisition cost and lifetime value: the vocabulary of a business, applied to a venture idea of their own.
Covered
- Revenue against profit
- Acquisition cost and lifetime value
- Break-even
- Reading a simple profit and loss
PROTECTION AND BEHAVIOR
Emergency funds, insurance, and the reason financially literate people still make bad decisions. Systems beat willpower, and the systems are teachable.
Covered
- Sizing an emergency fund
- Insurance fundamentals
- Behavioral finance basics
- Lifestyle inflation
THE PLAN
Each student presents a personal financial plan: their budget, their investment approach, and a ten-year projection with the assumptions written out where they can be argued with.
Covered
- A personal financial plan
- A ten-year projection
- Presenting to a panel
- Defending the assumptions
A written plan the student takes home
Why it is built this way
THE DECISIONS
BEHIND THE SYLLABUS.
Written down against still to write
EXACTLY WHAT
EXISTS TODAY.
We publish the right-hand column because a school deciding whether to wait for this program needs to know how far away it is, and because a funder who finds the gap themselves will reasonably wonder what else was left out. The full map carries the same status for every grade band we have not reached.
WANT THIS ONE
BUILT SOONER?
What moves a program from designed to written is a school willing to run the first one and the funding to write the materials properly. If either of those is you, that is the conversation we want to have.