The curriculum
Every unit, every lesson, and the standard it teaches
16 lessons across 8 units, for ages 8-12. Each lesson is 10-15 minutes on screen and ends offline, where the money is real. Every unit includes the digital lessons, the printable kit, the parent guide with answer keys, and a real-money mission.
Kids take the 15-question Networthy Score before Lesson 1 and again after Lesson 16, so the growth is a number rather than a feeling.
Standards shown against each lesson are the Texas TEKS 5.10 strands and the 2021 National Standards for Personal Financial Education. Crosswalks for Texas, New York, Utah, Iowa and Florida come with the course, free.
Unit 1: Money Choices · Lessons 1-2
L1: Needs, Wants & the One-Cart Rule. Scarcity and opportunity cost, then a real grocery run where every item in the cart needs a spoken why. National: Spending.
L2: How Smart Spenders Decide. A decision grid for real purchases, and the Sleep-On-It Rule. National: Spending, Saving.
Unit 2: Earning · Lessons 3-4
L3: Jobs, Skills & Paychecks. Where money comes from, and a priced Earning Menu with a first real customer ask. National: Earning Income.
L4: Gross vs. Net. Take-home pay, income and payroll tax on pretend pay stubs, then a sales tax hunt on a real receipt. TEKS 5.10A, 5.10B. National: Earning Income.
Unit 3: Spending · Lessons 5-6
L5: Ad Tricks & Unit Prices. The four tricks every ad uses, and the number on the shelf that never lies. National: Spending.
L6: Cash, Card, or Tap? Five ways to pay and whose money each one moves. TEKS 5.10C. National: Spending.
Unit 4: Saving · Lessons 7-8
L7: Goals Worth Saving For. A goal with three numbers, pay-yourself-first, and three real jars. National: Saving.
L8: Where Money Grows. Why banks pay interest, compound growth, and the saving-vs-investing lanes. National: Saving, Investing.
Unit 5: Budgeting · Lessons 9-10
L9: Build Your First Budget. A real month of their real money, signed and hung on the fridge. TEKS 5.10F. National: Spending (a Grade 8 benchmark, taught 3 years early).
L10: When the Numbers Don't Work. The three moves for a broken budget, and a 4-week money log. TEKS 5.10D, 5.10E.
Unit 6: Borrowing & Credit · Lessons 11-12
L11: What Borrowing Really Costs. Loans, interest as rent, and a real signed family loan with real payments. National: Managing Credit.
L12: Credit: Promise & Trouble. Credit as trust, the trust meter, and when borrowing helps vs. hurts. National: Managing Credit.
Unit 7: Sharing & Protecting · Lessons 13-14
L13: Giving That Counts. Planning giving around what your family cares about. National: Earning Income, Spending.
L14: Scam-Proof Yourself. Spotting scams, protecting information, and what insurance is for. National: Managing Risk.
Unit 8: The Capstone: My Money Enterprise · Lessons 15-16
L15: Plan the Business. A one-page business plan: costs, price, break-even, pitch. Applies everything.
L16: Launch, Count & Reflect. Run it for real, keep the records, compute the profit, budget the earnings. Certificate earned, not given. Applies everything.
Units release in order; the final units ship ahead of your kid reaching them.
What that adds up to
By lesson 16, your kid has built a budget, rescued a broken one, kept four weeks of money records, dodged three kinds of scams, and run a business with a profit report to show for it. Then they can teach it back to you. That's the test.
Why grade 5 first, and what comes next
This course is built for grade 5 and fits ages 8 to 12. Strong 4th graders do fine.
It is the start, not the whole story: we're building the full K-5 arc, and we started at the top on purpose. Grade 5 carries the hardest concepts in the arc, the ones we most need kids to truly grasp: budgets, interest, credit. And fifth graders are the toughest audience in it, old enough to run every real-money mission and quick to call out anything boring, confusing or fake. Perfect the system where the concepts are hardest and the critics are loudest, and it holds up all the way down, resized for each age.
The plan runs in order: dial in grade 5 with real families first, then build down grade by grade to kindergarten on the same system, then middle school so your kid never outgrows us mid-education, then high school. Our whole thesis is that money habits form early, so we would rather perfect the foundation first.
The frameworks we build to
"Standards-aligned" is easy to say. Here is exactly what Networthy is built to, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
2021 National Standards for Personal Financial Education
Published jointly by the Council for Economic Education and the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, the national standards define six topics every financially literate student should master:
Networthy is built to the Grade 4 benchmarks across all six topics. Why Grade 4 for a grade 5 course? The national standards only set benchmarks at grades 4, 8, and 12, and each one describes what a student should know by the END of that grade. Almost no kid is actually taught the Grade 4 material on time, so grade 5 is where it gets taught properly, mastered, and stretched.
And in one place we go well past the band: budgeting is a Grade 8 benchmark nationally. Networthy teaches it at grade 5, three years early, because waiting helps no one.
Read the full standards (PDF, Council for Economic Education) · Jump$tart Coalition: National Standards
Texas TEKS: Math 5.10, every strand
Texas writes personal financial literacy directly into elementary math. The Grade 5 course covers all six strands, lesson by lesson:
- 5.10A Define income tax, payroll tax, sales tax, and property tax (Lesson 4)
- 5.10B Explain the difference between gross income and net income (Lesson 4)
- 5.10C Advantages and disadvantages of checks, credit cards, debit cards, and electronic payments (Lesson 6)
- 5.10D Develop a system for keeping and using financial records (Lesson 10)
- 5.10E Describe actions to balance a budget when expenses exceed income (Lesson 10)
- 5.10F Balance a simple budget (Lesson 9)
Mathematics TEKS, Texas Education Agency · full standard text: 19 Texas Administrative Code, Chapter 111, Section 111.7 (Grade 5)
Your state, specifically
Crosswalks mapping every lesson to the state framework exist for Texas, New York, Utah, Iowa and Florida, and come with the course free.
Six frameworks, not fifty. If your state isn't one of them, the national standards line is the honest one and we will tell you that rather than claim your state by name.
One payment, every kid in your household, no subscription. 30 days, no questions asked.