learnfinancewith
After grade 12
Pathways
The gap is not one subject, so the answer is not one course. The pathways run in parallel across all thirteen years, each getting harder as the student does.
Why several, and why in parallel
They are not sequential units to be finished and set down. A second grader is doing banking, spending choices, bookkeeping and enterprise on the same afternoon — at the level of a piggy bank, a want against a need, a tally of what they have, and a lemonade stand.
The same strands are still running in twelfth grade, at the level of an account with fees, a loan amortisation, a diversified portfolio, an insurance claim, a double-entry ledger that reconciles, and a business with payroll and a tax bill.
Running them in parallel is what makes the ideas connect. Margin is a business idea, but it is also why the price went up; interest is a banking idea, but it is also what makes the loan cost what it costs; a fee is a spending idea until it compounds inside a fund for forty years.
The list started at four and grew as the curriculum did. There is no reason to hold it at any particular number: when a strand of the curriculum can answer the four questions every pathway page answers, it gets a page.
- BankingWhat an account is, what it costs, and how to read what it tells you.
- Personal financeEarning, budgeting, borrowing, insuring — and the arithmetic of waiting.
- Earning and careersWages, pay stubs, withholding, and what a job actually pays.
- Credit and borrowingWhat borrowed money costs, what a credit file says, and who is reading it.
- InvestingGrowth, risk, fees, and the four decades between a first paycheck and a last one.
- ProtectionInsurance, scams, identity, and data — the defensive half of every other pathway.
- AccountingNot the degree. The ability to read and keep your own books.
- BusinessOwning one: pricing, margin, payroll, tax, and where the money actually goes.