11 ms·

EconTeen – Financial literacy lessons and tools for teens

82 points by Chrisjackson4 1y ago

Chrisjackson4 1y ago
We just launched the second version of EconTeen, a financial literacy platform built to teach middle and high schoolers how money actually works. Most kids don’t get any financial education we’re trying to fix that. 22+ self-paced lessons 25+ real-world tools (budgeting, investing, taxes, careers, etc.) Our first launch reached 2,500+ students, and we’re now gearing up for back-to-school outreach with teachers and schools. https://www.producthunt.com/products/econteen?launch=econteen-2 https://www.producthunt.com/products/econteen?launch=econtee... https://econteen.com/ https://econteen.com/ I’d love any feedback, harsh or helpful. Thanks! – Christopher
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  > Most kids don’t get any financial education We got some, in home economics. Not sure that subject is really offered anymore? That was mostly around budgeting. What we didn't get nearly enough of was time value of money, and the cost of credit/borrowing. As a result a lot of people buy a car and it's just a payment. They have no idea what they are paying as a total price. They don't start a 401K because they have no concept how much difference compounding makes if you start saving when you are 22 vs. 50. Then they are upset when companies do stuff "to benefit stockholders" and never consider that they could have been a stockholder.
  - jncfhnb 1y ago
    > never consider that they could have been a stockholder. They can’t to any meaningful extent. Compound interest still sucks when you don’t have a meaningful initial investment.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    Then they are upset when companies do stuff "to benefit stockholders" and never consider that they could have been a stockholder Some people think companies should have moral obligations toward their workers and customers as well as stockholders and executives.
- dsiegel2275 1y ago
  Curious if your platform supports LTI 1.3 for easy integration with school LMSes?
- harmmonica 1y ago
  I tried to find a freemium option that didn't require me signing up or agreeing to spend $3.99 at some later date. Could be helpful to get more people deeper into the "funnel." Like maybe open up the first 1/x of one of the 22 lessons? If that option is there I couldn't find it so consider that a single-user usability test or just user error.
  - jncfhnb 1y ago
    there is some great irony on the concept of putting in a debt driven option here
  - varenc 1y ago
    This is a great use for privacy.com generated credit cards! Basically, you create a unique credit card number but set its budget to $1. They won't be able to start charging you until you raise the limit on the card. That's how I think all trials should work: requiring an additional confirmation to start charging you. Also pretty ironic that this site is designed to trick you into paying for a subscription you've forgotten about...but that's the entire subscription/free trial economy of course.
- mrangle 1y ago
  It seems like an interesting idea. I'd be intrigued, but would quickly click away. You're forgoing the part of the sales cycle where you demonstrate what you are offering. It goes from telling me, briefly, to asking for a credit card. I rarely to never give a credit card in exchange for a free trial. Not without some type of proof of concept, first. It's like being asked for a credit card by someone who approaches me on the street and asks me to trust them. Absent widespread recommendations, If I don't have a better idea of what I'm buying then I won't buy it.
- coolandsmartrr 1y ago
  Could you make the curriculum visible on the landing page? I'm sure students/customers want to understand what kind of lessons they're signing up for.
m-hodges 1y ago
Is this about Finance or Economics?
_def 1y ago
Knee jerk reaction: teens that need this won't have the money to pay for it
- snvzz 1y ago
  First lesson: Avoid recurring payments aka subscriptions.
- apsurd 1y ago
  Education tends toward public good will if the mission is to educate and improve learning outcomes. I've been told there's tons of money in education! But the insight is the edtech stuff that makes money does not sell education. B2b up-skilling platforms for example sell the promise of higher earnings. Food safety, HR training sell compliance. College prep sells college acceptance, and so on. The people with the foresight to pay for financial literacy will very likely already be financially literate. I'm conflicted.
  - eru 1y ago
    What does college sell? Btw, there's also money in actual learning things, look at eg music classes adults take just for their own sake. (Of course, you could say that a guitar teacher is selling 'getting laid'. But that's perhaps going a bit too far.)
    - apsurd 1y ago
      Gateway/access to professional-tier job market. This is what they sell, but it's outdated since the 50s and millennials+ have slowly realized it was largely false promises. (both sides are to blame just to be clear)
      - kevindamm 1y ago
        I think a lot of people underestimate the most valuable resource at universities: the access to specialized experts who love to talk with a curious and interested audience. Going through college by only kind of attending class and doing only the required work and exams, yeah the whole thing might feel like a scam, I could see that. But attending office hours, taking interesting gym classes, auditing a random class in a peripheral interest, involvement in clubs, and many other side quests will elevate that experience significantly. If that were the only thing, yeah I could see it being a hard sell.. especially as costs have gotten a lot higher than when I went to university at the beginning of the millennium. But add in the peer network and the ease of making friends because of repeated random encounters.. and I think it's still worth it. The whole "companies expect a degree, at least to show that you can finish a multi-year effort" was always an afterthought for me.
theogravity 1y ago
Really love the idea! I tried going to the FAQ on mobile safari on iOS and can't scroll on the answer sections, so the text is cut off.
DoctorWhoof 1y ago
Couldn't find anywhere (looked in F.A.Q. first) which age group this is most appropriate for. "Teens" is kinda vague! Some clear requirement like "5th grade math" would be more appropriate.
- poly2it 1y ago
  They list a high school freshman in their reviews.
hirvi74 1y ago
How well can one learn financial literacy and how to manage money when one lacks financial assets and money of any significant amount? I am not questioning that one can learn enough to pass the lessons, but often times, lessons fail to prepare for the real world. I personally consider myself to be quite keen in the areas of financial literacy compared to most people. To be honest, I owe most of what I learned to two things: 1. Being addicted to Runescape in my youth back in the early 2000s. I am dead serious too. For a boring grindy point-and-click adventure, the game really had a lot of real world lessons packed in to it -- predominately to much of the game's economy depending on interactions with other players at the time. 2. Some unpleasant experiences growing up, but I do not feel like those had as much as an impact as #1, oddly enough. One important point about the game is that I had stake in the game, so to speak. I put a lot of (wasted) time and (wasted) effort into the game in order to earn more and more fake, virtual currency. However, that in-game currency, at the time, had a lot of value to me. Every decision I made with the in-game currency had to be calculated and tact. "How do I earn enough for <x>?" If I spend <y>, I can afford <z>, but won't have enough for <a>" And so on. I feel like in a lesson on a platform like EconTeen might lack that "stake" or "value" that MMORPG resources or real world money has. I am not trying to say EconTeen is a subpar product or anything like that. I am just thinking about myself, once a teenager, and I know I would have learned just enough to make it through these lessons as fast possible so that I may return to my video game as fast as possible.
- reactordev 1y ago
  Robux, this needs to be in robux… You’re right. It wasn’t until I had any kind of real money that I had to actually learn financial literacy. I learned it as a kid but had completely forgotten because I grew up poor.
- trod1234 1y ago
  Looking at the listed curricula, this won't teach kids the skills they need to have financial literacy which is a very low bar needed to make financial decisions. Listed Curricula: Budgeting • Saving • Banking • Credit • Investing • Insurance • Taxes • College Finance • Career Planning • Entrepreneurship • Economics • Consumer Rights This is so broad that the important parts won't have sufficient detail to understand the foundations. I can almost guarantee you they won't have talked about fiat currency, or inflation aside from the macro perspective which won't connect to anything at the individual level (Micro). If you want your kids to understand finance and by extension money you start with Mises on Human Action, then The Theory of Money and Credit, then Menger/Hayek, a review of Adam Smith's 5 volume set, and later Socialism.
more_corn 1y ago
First financial lesson for teens. Control your subscription expenditures.
mushufasa 1y ago
there was a company "Zogo" that built a phone app to do this and sold it to banks as a free perk to try to increase savings rates / utilization of financial products at the bank. Had some moderate success. Haven't heard about it recently.
coderoller 1y ago
Another subscription... With so many subscriptions for everything these days, I'm turning back to good old books to educate the kids. You pay once, they don't disappear after reading unlike in Fallout games, so you can reuse them with all the kids :). Helping them enjoy reading early really makes a lasting difference!
fn-mote 1y ago
Just a comment for institutional subscriptions: if you haven't found out already, you'll probably want to hire some sales people who have the ability to check boxes and get through district red tape. If you're doing it, make sure you keep the single classroom subscription price beneath the threshold of "reimbursible with a receipt" instead of "must go through the business office". The latter can really end up being very involved. (You'll still find reluctance to spend that way, but at least it makes trials viable.) Source: gave up on the process. It seemed the larger the bureaucracy, the lower the conversion rate.
apparent 1y ago
I appreciate this wasn't posted as a Show HN since it's impossible to see the lessons/curriculum without paying. If you want actual feedback, maybe create a dummy account that HNers can use to test it out. As a parent, I find the landing page to be opaque and not something I would plunk down my credit card number for. Are the lessons videos? Chatbot interactions? Homework questions? How will I know if my child is learning anything? Unless I heard from a trusted friend that this was great for his kid, I would not sign up.
throwanem 1y ago
No video demo, all gloss with no substance, pricing is the biggest thing everywhere, and the "social proof" is fake to a contemptuous degree. It doesn't matter whether you made this with AI or not. Everyone will assume you did, either way. This is going to be Hacker News till the crash, huh. We're hitting the "stock tips from shoeshine boys" stage of the bubble. Thank God my money's in real estate.
lelanthran 1y ago
First econ lesson: Don't pay $3.99/m for study material that has never been confirmed to be useful. There's plenty of free resources, right now, that are much much better. This looks like a pure money grab, vibe-coded in the shortest possible time with, likely, vibe-generated study material.
- BrenBarn 1y ago
  It's another form of the "How to Get Rich Quick" book where the answer is "Write a book about how to get rich quick".
  - lelanthran 1y ago
    > It's another form of the "How to Get Rich Quick" book where the answer is "Write a book about how to get rich quick". I dunno if you're joking (or only semi-serious), but, TBH, the largest number of "how to grow your business" courses are all based on how the author/presenter grew a business around a book/video/content called "how to grow your business". A good example of this is the "Stacking the bricks"(sp?) thing. I looked into so many of these paid courses, and the only experience the author is demonstrating is "how to make money teaching a course on how to make money". There's an entire, almost incestuous, industry around this, with each "business-person" referencing other business-people's success stories using their "how to grow your business" course in their own "how to grow your business" course, with testimonials from course-completers who made some money out of their own "How to grow your business" course. From the outside, it looks almost looks like a pyramid, but on closer inspection it appears to be undirected cyclic graph. [EDIT] I expect all this to collapse soon, as the cost of producing this useless material is now approaching zero. This means that the participants in this network can now each "produce" new material on a minute by minute/hour by hour basis. When the production of a product is close to zero AND the utility to the consumer is also zero, there is no way for anyone in this network to make money anymore, because the new entrants will be so overloaded with choices (millions of different courses to choose from) that they may never enter the network at all.
    - toast0 1y ago
inemesitaffia 1y ago
Based on whose economics?
wosined 1y ago
I browse hackernews to get away from this kind of slop.

82 points by Chrisjackson4 1y ago

We just launched the second version of EconTeen, a financial literacy platform built to teach middle and high schoolers how money actually works. Most kids don’t get any financial education we’re trying to fix that. 22+ self-paced lessons 25+ real-world tools (budgeting, investing, taxes, careers, etc.) Our first launch reached 2,500+ students, and we’re now gearing up for back-to-school outreach with teachers and schools. https://www.producthunt.com/products/econteen?launch=econteen-2 https://www.producthunt.com/products/econteen?launch=econtee... https://econteen.com/ https://econteen.com/ I’d love any feedback, harsh or helpful. Thanks! – Christopher

SoftTalker 1y ago
> Most kids don’t get any financial education We got some, in home economics. Not sure that subject is really offered anymore? That was mostly around budgeting. What we didn't get nearly enough of was time value of money, and the cost of credit/borrowing. As a result a lot of people buy a car and it's just a payment. They have no idea what they are paying as a total price. They don't start a 401K because they have no concept how much difference compounding makes if you start saving when you are 22 vs. 50. Then they are upset when companies do stuff "to benefit stockholders" and never consider that they could have been a stockholder.
- jncfhnb 1y ago
  > never consider that they could have been a stockholder. They can’t to any meaningful extent. Compound interest still sucks when you don’t have a meaningful initial investment.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  Then they are upset when companies do stuff "to benefit stockholders" and never consider that they could have been a stockholder Some people think companies should have moral obligations toward their workers and customers as well as stockholders and executives.
dsiegel2275 1y ago
Curious if your platform supports LTI 1.3 for easy integration with school LMSes?
harmmonica 1y ago
I tried to find a freemium option that didn't require me signing up or agreeing to spend $3.99 at some later date. Could be helpful to get more people deeper into the "funnel." Like maybe open up the first 1/x of one of the 22 lessons? If that option is there I couldn't find it so consider that a single-user usability test or just user error.
- jncfhnb 1y ago
  there is some great irony on the concept of putting in a debt driven option here
- varenc 1y ago
  This is a great use for privacy.com generated credit cards! Basically, you create a unique credit card number but set its budget to $1. They won't be able to start charging you until you raise the limit on the card. That's how I think all trials should work: requiring an additional confirmation to start charging you. Also pretty ironic that this site is designed to trick you into paying for a subscription you've forgotten about...but that's the entire subscription/free trial economy of course.
mrangle 1y ago
It seems like an interesting idea. I'd be intrigued, but would quickly click away. You're forgoing the part of the sales cycle where you demonstrate what you are offering. It goes from telling me, briefly, to asking for a credit card. I rarely to never give a credit card in exchange for a free trial. Not without some type of proof of concept, first. It's like being asked for a credit card by someone who approaches me on the street and asks me to trust them. Absent widespread recommendations, If I don't have a better idea of what I'm buying then I won't buy it.
coolandsmartrr 1y ago
Could you make the curriculum visible on the landing page? I'm sure students/customers want to understand what kind of lessons they're signing up for.

m-hodges 1y ago

Is this about Finance or Economics?

_def 1y ago

Knee jerk reaction: teens that need this won't have the money to pay for it

snvzz 1y ago
First lesson: Avoid recurring payments aka subscriptions.
apsurd 1y ago
Education tends toward public good will if the mission is to educate and improve learning outcomes. I've been told there's tons of money in education! But the insight is the edtech stuff that makes money does not sell education. B2b up-skilling platforms for example sell the promise of higher earnings. Food safety, HR training sell compliance. College prep sells college acceptance, and so on. The people with the foresight to pay for financial literacy will very likely already be financially literate. I'm conflicted.
- eru 1y ago
  What does college sell? Btw, there's also money in actual learning things, look at eg music classes adults take just for their own sake. (Of course, you could say that a guitar teacher is selling 'getting laid'. But that's perhaps going a bit too far.)
  - apsurd 1y ago
    Gateway/access to professional-tier job market. This is what they sell, but it's outdated since the 50s and millennials+ have slowly realized it was largely false promises. (both sides are to blame just to be clear)
    - kevindamm 1y ago
      I think a lot of people underestimate the most valuable resource at universities: the access to specialized experts who love to talk with a curious and interested audience. Going through college by only kind of attending class and doing only the required work and exams, yeah the whole thing might feel like a scam, I could see that. But attending office hours, taking interesting gym classes, auditing a random class in a peripheral interest, involvement in clubs, and many other side quests will elevate that experience significantly. If that were the only thing, yeah I could see it being a hard sell.. especially as costs have gotten a lot higher than when I went to university at the beginning of the millennium. But add in the peer network and the ease of making friends because of repeated random encounters.. and I think it's still worth it. The whole "companies expect a degree, at least to show that you can finish a multi-year effort" was always an afterthought for me.

theogravity 1y ago

Really love the idea! I tried going to the FAQ on mobile safari on iOS and can't scroll on the answer sections, so the text is cut off.

DoctorWhoof 1y ago

Couldn't find anywhere (looked in F.A.Q. first) which age group this is most appropriate for. "Teens" is kinda vague! Some clear requirement like "5th grade math" would be more appropriate.

poly2it 1y ago
They list a high school freshman in their reviews.

hirvi74 1y ago

How well can one learn financial literacy and how to manage money when one lacks financial assets and money of any significant amount? I am not questioning that one can learn enough to pass the lessons, but often times, lessons fail to prepare for the real world. I personally consider myself to be quite keen in the areas of financial literacy compared to most people. To be honest, I owe most of what I learned to two things: 1. Being addicted to Runescape in my youth back in the early 2000s. I am dead serious too. For a boring grindy point-and-click adventure, the game really had a lot of real world lessons packed in to it -- predominately to much of the game's economy depending on interactions with other players at the time. 2. Some unpleasant experiences growing up, but I do not feel like those had as much as an impact as #1, oddly enough. One important point about the game is that I had stake in the game, so to speak. I put a lot of (wasted) time and (wasted) effort into the game in order to earn more and more fake, virtual currency. However, that in-game currency, at the time, had a lot of value to me. Every decision I made with the in-game currency had to be calculated and tact. "How do I earn enough for <x>?" If I spend <y>, I can afford <z>, but won't have enough for <a>" And so on. I feel like in a lesson on a platform like EconTeen might lack that "stake" or "value" that MMORPG resources or real world money has. I am not trying to say EconTeen is a subpar product or anything like that. I am just thinking about myself, once a teenager, and I know I would have learned just enough to make it through these lessons as fast possible so that I may return to my video game as fast as possible.

reactordev 1y ago
Robux, this needs to be in robux… You’re right. It wasn’t until I had any kind of real money that I had to actually learn financial literacy. I learned it as a kid but had completely forgotten because I grew up poor.
trod1234 1y ago
Looking at the listed curricula, this won't teach kids the skills they need to have financial literacy which is a very low bar needed to make financial decisions. Listed Curricula: Budgeting • Saving • Banking • Credit • Investing • Insurance • Taxes • College Finance • Career Planning • Entrepreneurship • Economics • Consumer Rights This is so broad that the important parts won't have sufficient detail to understand the foundations. I can almost guarantee you they won't have talked about fiat currency, or inflation aside from the macro perspective which won't connect to anything at the individual level (Micro). If you want your kids to understand finance and by extension money you start with Mises on Human Action, then The Theory of Money and Credit, then Menger/Hayek, a review of Adam Smith's 5 volume set, and later Socialism.

more_corn 1y ago

First financial lesson for teens. Control your subscription expenditures.

mushufasa 1y ago

there was a company "Zogo" that built a phone app to do this and sold it to banks as a free perk to try to increase savings rates / utilization of financial products at the bank. Had some moderate success. Haven't heard about it recently.

coderoller 1y ago

Another subscription... With so many subscriptions for everything these days, I'm turning back to good old books to educate the kids. You pay once, they don't disappear after reading unlike in Fallout games, so you can reuse them with all the kids :). Helping them enjoy reading early really makes a lasting difference!

fn-mote 1y ago

Just a comment for institutional subscriptions: if you haven't found out already, you'll probably want to hire some sales people who have the ability to check boxes and get through district red tape. If you're doing it, make sure you keep the single classroom subscription price beneath the threshold of "reimbursible with a receipt" instead of "must go through the business office". The latter can really end up being very involved. (You'll still find reluctance to spend that way, but at least it makes trials viable.) Source: gave up on the process. It seemed the larger the bureaucracy, the lower the conversion rate.

apparent 1y ago

I appreciate this wasn't posted as a Show HN since it's impossible to see the lessons/curriculum without paying. If you want actual feedback, maybe create a dummy account that HNers can use to test it out. As a parent, I find the landing page to be opaque and not something I would plunk down my credit card number for. Are the lessons videos? Chatbot interactions? Homework questions? How will I know if my child is learning anything? Unless I heard from a trusted friend that this was great for his kid, I would not sign up.

throwanem 1y ago

No video demo, all gloss with no substance, pricing is the biggest thing everywhere, and the "social proof" is fake to a contemptuous degree. It doesn't matter whether you made this with AI or not. Everyone will assume you did, either way. This is going to be Hacker News till the crash, huh. We're hitting the "stock tips from shoeshine boys" stage of the bubble. Thank God my money's in real estate.

lelanthran 1y ago

First econ lesson: Don't pay $3.99/m for study material that has never been confirmed to be useful. There's plenty of free resources, right now, that are much much better. This looks like a pure money grab, vibe-coded in the shortest possible time with, likely, vibe-generated study material.

BrenBarn 1y ago
It's another form of the "How to Get Rich Quick" book where the answer is "Write a book about how to get rich quick".
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > It's another form of the "How to Get Rich Quick" book where the answer is "Write a book about how to get rich quick". I dunno if you're joking (or only semi-serious), but, TBH, the largest number of "how to grow your business" courses are all based on how the author/presenter grew a business around a book/video/content called "how to grow your business". A good example of this is the "Stacking the bricks"(sp?) thing. I looked into so many of these paid courses, and the only experience the author is demonstrating is "how to make money teaching a course on how to make money". There's an entire, almost incestuous, industry around this, with each "business-person" referencing other business-people's success stories using their "how to grow your business" course in their own "how to grow your business" course, with testimonials from course-completers who made some money out of their own "How to grow your business" course. From the outside, it looks almost looks like a pyramid, but on closer inspection it appears to be undirected cyclic graph. [EDIT] I expect all this to collapse soon, as the cost of producing this useless material is now approaching zero. This means that the participants in this network can now each "produce" new material on a minute by minute/hour by hour basis. When the production of a product is close to zero AND the utility to the consumer is also zero, there is no way for anyone in this network to make money anymore, because the new entrants will be so overloaded with choices (millions of different courses to choose from) that they may never enter the network at all.
  - toast0 1y ago

inemesitaffia 1y ago

Based on whose economics?

wosined 1y ago

I browse hackernews to get away from this kind of slop.