Enterprise track · Grades 3 to 12

THE MONEY KNOWLEDGE
THAT USUALLY ARRIVES
THROUGH A FAMILY.

Compound interest, credit, margin and risk are not difficult. They are simply not taught, so most people meet them for the first time in a contract they have already signed.

The syllabus below was written for Grades 9 to 12 as an eight-week summer program. That format was cut in October 2026. From Grade 7 these ideas belong to the Grades 7 to 12 program: self-paced lessons in our web app, plus guest speakers in person. Grade 7 is written and open to educators in a preview; Grades 8 to 12 come next. This outline's content is credit scores, interest rates and index funds, and it belongs where a student is close to meeting those things. It is built so that a student leaves with their own budget, their own projection and their own plan, using their own numbers rather than a worksheet about somebody else.

Financial literacy in the elementary grades is a different subject, and four full years of it are written and free to download today. Grade 3, The Choosing Year: there is enough for one of two things, and every choice costs you the other. Grade 4, The Planning Year: decide before you spend rather than while you are spending. Grade 5, The Keeping Year: a price is what you pay once, a cost is what it keeps costing. Grade 6, The Asking Year: the numbers other people put in front of you, and what would have to be true for them to hold.

Designed, not yet written

Read this before
you read the syllabus.

The outline below is real and it is finished. It was written for a summer program that has since been cut, and the lessons that would let anyone teach it, in the Grades 7 to 12 app or anywhere else, are not written. No student has worked through it, so there is nothing on this page about results, and there will not be until there is something true to report.

What is written: the elementary workbooks, free and ready to run today, one page a week inside the school year, and the Grade 7 year of our web app, open to educators in a preview. The bands below say where this line stands, grade by grade. Take a finished year.

Grades 1–2

Does not run here

Grades 3–5

Published

Complete: The Choosing Year, The Planning Year and The Keeping Year, 36 weeks each.

Grades 6–8

Published

Grade 6 complete: The Asking Year, 36 weeks. From Grade 7 it moves to the web app. All eight Grade 7 units are written and educators can try them in a preview; no student has used them yet. No printed year is planned.

Grades 9–12

Designed

Part of the Grades 7 to 12 program: lessons in the web app, and guest speakers in person. Designed, not written yet.

The eight-week outline

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.

01Week 1

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
02Week 2

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
03Week 3

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
04Week 4

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
05Week 5

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
06Week 6

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
07Week 7

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
08Week 8

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.

Their numbers, not a worksheet

Every exercise runs on figures the student supplies. A budget built from an invented salary teaches arithmetic; a budget built from what they actually have coming in teaches budgeting.

Nothing is sold

No product, platform, bank or brokerage appears anywhere in the material, and we will not accept sponsorship that would put one there. Financial education paid for by financial companies is marketing.

The mock portfolio is allowed to lose

It is built in week five so that it has time to move, including downward. A simulation that only ever goes up teaches the wrong lesson about risk.

Written down against still to write

Exactly what
exists today.

Finished and reviewable

  • Four elementary years, Grades 3 to 6: The Choosing Year, The Planning Year, The Keeping Year and The Asking Year. 36 weeks each, written and free
  • A teacher guide for each of the four, with every numeric answer recomputed from the problems by a script that refuses to build the book if one disagrees
  • An eight-week outline for Grades 9 to 12, with skills defined per week
  • The sequence and the reasoning behind its order
  • Grade 7 in the web app: all eight units written and checked, open to educators in a preview

Not written yet

  • The Grades 8 to 12 lessons and projection templates
  • A pre and post assessment
  • Any delivery we have run ourselves, of the four elementary years or of the older material

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.