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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
You are right on some of these points. We have been working on this project for over a year now and take every piece of feedback seriously. We have logged all the feedback from this version 2.0 launch and have begun to work on a massive overhaul, that of which will include a much cheaper/free method to view the content. As well as better quality content, our team has been working with students at Georgia tech & other universities to begin this process.
Thanks for your feedback, and thank you for helping us make EconTeen better.
16 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 34.4 ms ] threadMost 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=econtee...
https://econteen.com/
I’d love any feedback, harsh or helpful. Thanks!
– Christopher
Some clear requirement like "5th grade math" would be more appropriate.
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.
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!
Source: gave up on the process. It seemed the larger the bureaucracy, the lower the conversion rate.
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.
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.
This looks like a pure money grab, vibe-coded in the shortest possible time with, likely, vibe-generated study material.
Thanks for your feedback, and thank you for helping us make EconTeen better.