Free financial literacy platform for kids – 90 lessons, no paywall | Hacker News Reader

Free financial literacy platform for kids – 90 lessons, no paywall

learnfinly.com

16 pointsnarensara12 comments

The content is just poorly written and incomprehensible.

This article doesn't even get into the topic.

https://learnfinly.com/learn/types-of-accounts

Which part lost you? The lesson is written for 8-12 year olds so I tried to keep it simple, but if it's confusing I want to fix it

Yeah it doesn’t really make sense. Very wordy and doesn’t really clearly explain the types of accounts. Those should be the first thing you layout.

If you’re aim is kids you probably want to start with a story about something they can relate to and how the different types of accounts help. The reading level feels like it’s targeting college+ but not clearly.

A checking account is this. This is what is helpful for, this is its down side. Here’s a savings account here’s a high yield. Here’s an investment account etc.

Edit: love the idea though!

Have you written everything? Or is all generated by AI? Sorry for asking, but it sounds very weirdly structured for something aimed to 8-12 year olds.

A lot of these are based on notes I took in my personal finance class and videos I watched and took notes from. I used AI to help adapt them for the two age tiers and that's where I think it fell apart. The refinement process made them way more wordy and abstract than I wanted. That's on me for not catching it. I'm actively writing the worst ones today to actually just explain what things are first before anything else.

Near the top, the page claims it’s about learning the difference between checking, saving and money market accounts.

In the entire linked article, where is the explanation for what a savings account is? Most of the early paragraphs are just waffling about how “Types of Accounts” are important. I’m pretty sure I read the phrase “money is emotional” before even getting to any description of any type of account. The word “savings” almost never appears and none of the instances seemed to define a savings account.

Honestly, is this content written by AI? In my opinion it’s acceptable to use AI to replace the boilerplate HTML, JavaScript and CSS of your site. But using AI for the actual writing risks turning your “educational tool” into a tool for misinformation.

EDIT: according to Pangram, 100% of the first two paragraphs are AI generated. Which is not a surprise at all, I don’t see how a human tasked with describing types of bank accounts would struggle this hard.

Update: rewrote all 50 foundation and real-world lessons based on the feedback here. Definitions first, real numbers, concrete examples. The types-of-accounts lesson is already updated. Thanks to everyone who pushed back on this, it made the product better

So, when will my kids be able to understand a 1040 and then do my taxes?

It's actually on there @ learnfinly.com/learn/filing-taxes-first-time walks through the 1040 line by line. Won't replace a CPA but covers the basics.

Love the no-paywall aspect to this. We need to normalize financial talk and education on this topic. According to a recent Acorns report, "44% of Americans (and 53% of young adults) believe that simply ignoring financial decisions reduces their stress." That is a scary finding.

I built Finly because school covers personal finance for one semester and most kids forget it by graduation. I wanted something that stays useful — lessons you can come back to when you actually need them. It has 90+ lessons across budgeting, credit, taxes, investing, and finance careers (IB, VC, PE, quant). Split into two age tiers: 8-12 and 13-17 with different content for each. XP system, streaks, leaderboard, and a stock portfolio simulator where you invest $10,000 in real historical data and watch it play out. No account needed to start. No ads, no paywall, ever. Incorporated as a nonprofit. Built with Next.js, Supabase, Vercel. 190 Playwright tests. Happy to answer questions about the build or the content

Did you vibe code this? I see people ask all the time “so where are all the vibe coded tools and softwares that are being created by this productivity boost???” Maybe this is one of them and they can begin to see the value. If not, it’s even more impressive.

Great job from what I can tell. I’ve wanted something like this since my early twenties when I realized I had no financial literacy and I thought schools should be required to teach it.

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