For kids 9–12 · 15 lessons · 20 minutes each
The money education you wish you’d had at ten.
Fifteen lessons on how money, business, and investing really work. You don’t need a finance background. Every lesson hands you the words.
- All 15 lessons are published. Read the whole curriculum before you sign up.
- No balances, no tickers, no real money. Not a trading app for children.
- Built and tested by a dad and his 9-year-old. Every lesson gets tested at our kitchen table first.
Education, not advice. No real-money features, ever.
Field note · For the grown-up
Most of us doubt we can teach our kids how money works. You don’t need a finance background. Every lesson tells you exactly what to ask at dinner. That’s your whole job.
A note from the builder
The Long Game is built by a dad and his nine-year-old analyst, lesson by lesson. Every story, every game, and every dinner-table question gets field-tested at our own kitchen table before it reaches yours.
— Andrew, co-pilot of the original Junior Analyst
What this is not
Not a debit card. Not a trading app with a kid-friendly mascot.
No real-money features, ever. No balances, no tickers, no nudges to trade. A genuinely deep course, deep enough to challenge most kids, which is exactly why it’s built to be done with you.
Why it’s called The Long Game
Most of us learned money the expensive way.
Ask most grown-ups why a five dollar bill is worth anything, or what a company really is, and they’ll fumble it. We learned the rules late, by trial and error, usually after a few expensive mistakes.
Compounding rewards whoever starts earliest, and a ten-year-old has a thirty-year head start on the rest of us. That is longer than any hot tip or trade could ever give you. The biggest edge in money is time, and your child has more of it than anyone.
The expedition
All 15 lessons, mapped out.
Every lesson is a stop on one charted course, and every stop earns a thinking tool your kid keeps. Here’s the whole map. Nothing hidden behind a brochure.
Part I · The Market Square
Money & earning
- 1What is Money?earns: Money Mapper
- 2Earning & Choosingearns: Trade-Off Tracker
- 3What is a Company?earns: Company Spotter
- 4What is a Stock?earns: Owner's Mindset
- 5Inflation: Why Money Shrinksearns: Price Watcher
Part II · Open Water
Investing & what it costs
- 6The Magic of Compoundingearns: Patience Multiplier
- 7What Investing Actually Costsearns: Cost Hunter
- 8Risk & Rewardearns: Risk Reader
- 9Why Stock Prices Moveearns: News Detective
- 10Diversificationearns: Basket Builder
Part III · The Deep
The advanced kit
- 11Index Funds & ETFsearns: Index Thinker
- 12Researching a Companyearns: Junior Analyst Badge
- 13The Roth IRA: Your Tax-Free Engineearns: Tax-Free Thinker
- 14Crypto, Speculation & Scamsearns: Hype Detector
- 15Tracking & Reflectingearns: Reflective Investor
Built to be done together
They learn it. You get the words for it.
Every lesson teaches your kid one big idea, and hands you exactly what to do with it. No prep, no finance background, no guessing what they actually understood. Twenty minutes at the kitchen table, and the rare kind of screen time you won’t feel bad about.
They learn why money exists.
You get the dinner-table question that proves it stuck.
They earn a thinking tool every lesson.
You get a weekly briefing: what they mastered, in plain English.
They pass a field exam before moving on.
You get proof of understanding. No balances, no tickers, ever.
Pricing
Free while we’re in beta.
Founding families get the full 15-lesson course free during the beta, and a say in what we build next. Full pricing arrives with v1. Beta families will hear it from us first.
Start Lesson 1 free →Education, not advice. No real-money features, ever.
FAQ
What parents ask us
What age is this right for?+
Built for kids 9 to 12. Younger siblings can tag along with more help from you; teens will still learn plenty, but the stories and games are tuned for this window: the years when money habits actually form.
Do I need a finance background?+
No, and that's the point. Every lesson hands you the exact question to ask at dinner and a plain-English briefing on what your kid just mastered. You're the co-pilot, not the instructor.
How long does a lesson take?+
Plan on 20–30 minutes per lesson, best done together. There are 15 lessons. There's no schedule pressure. The course waits for you.
Is this about the stock market?+
It's about how the whole everyday economy works: what money is, how businesses earn, why prices move, what fees and inflation quietly cost. Investing is one strand of the bigger story.
Does my kid trade real money?+
Never. There are no real-money features, no balances, and no tickers, by design. This is education, not advice, and not a trading app for children.
What does it cost?+
The Long Game is free while we're in beta. Full pricing arrives with v1, and beta families will get it first, along with a founding-family thank-you.
Will my kid actually finish it?+
Fifteen lessons, not an endless subscription. Each one takes 20 to 30 minutes, there is no schedule pressure, and a field exam gates each step so nobody drifts forward without really understanding. A course with an end is a course that can be finished.
What happens to my child's data?+
You give us a parent email address to sign in. For your child we store a first name, a birth month and year (never the day), an avatar choice, their lesson progress and quiz scores, and anything you send us through the feedback box. That is the whole list. There are no third-party trackers, nothing is sold to anyone, and there are no brokerage or real-money connections anywhere in the product. The privacy policy spells it out in plain English.
How every lesson works
A story, a trip back in time, and a game that proves it stuck.
Every idea arrives as a story
No lectures. Each concept opens with a hook a 10-year-old actually wants to follow.
History makes it stick
Jump to the moment the idea was born: tulip manias, first banks, the invention of the receipt.
A game proves they got it
Understanding is checked, not assumed. Pass the round, earn the tool, stamp the map.