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.
> It's another form of the "How to Get Rich Quick" book where the answer is "Write a book about how to get rich quick".
I dunno if you're joking (or only semi-serious), but, TBH, the largest number of "how to grow your business" courses are all based on how the author/presenter grew a business around a book/video/content called "how to grow your business".
A good example of this is the "Stacking the bricks"(sp?) thing. I looked into so many of these paid courses, and the only experience the author is demonstrating is "how to make money teaching a course on how to make money".
There's an entire, almost incestuous, industry around this, with each "business-person" referencing other business-people's success stories using their "how to grow your business" course in their own "how to grow your business" course, with testimonials from course-completers who made some money out of their own "How to grow your business" course.
From the outside, it looks almost looks like a pyramid, but on closer inspection it appears to be undirected cyclic graph.
[EDIT]
I expect all this to collapse soon, as the cost of producing this useless material is now approaching zero. This means that the participants in this network can now each "produce" new material on a minute by minute/hour by hour basis. When the production of a product is close to zero AND the utility to the consumer is also zero, there is no way for anyone in this network to make money anymore, because the new entrants will be so overloaded with choices (millions of different courses to choose from) that they may never enter the network at all.
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.
I'm pretty sure the first lesson will be that you're a sucker and you could have gotten the same content for free if you went to "https://econteen.com/<free_content_path>".
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.
You’re right. It wasn’t until I had any kind of real money that I had to actually learn financial literacy. I learned it as a kid but had completely forgotten because I grew up poor.
Looking at the listed curricula, this won't teach kids the skills they need to have financial literacy which is a very low bar needed to make financial decisions.
Listed Curricula:
Budgeting • Saving • Banking • Credit • Investing • Insurance • Taxes • College Finance • Career Planning • Entrepreneurship • Economics • Consumer Rights
This is so broad that the important parts won't have sufficient detail to understand the foundations. I can almost guarantee you they won't have talked about fiat currency, or inflation aside from the macro perspective which won't connect to anything at the individual level (Micro).
If you want your kids to understand finance and by extension money you start with Mises on Human Action, then The Theory of Money and Credit, then Menger/Hayek, a review of Adam Smith's 5 volume set, and later Socialism.
Don't you think that your book suggestions in the last paragraph are oddly focused on a niche branch of internet economics, one that happens to be particularly popular in the US and not particularly popular in Germany or Austria where they geographically originated from?
One would think that a discussion about teaching teenagers would focus on teaching them a broader view instead of tunneling them in one specific direction that happens to antagonize socialism and then only at the end teach them about socialism. That sounds eerily close minded.
I have different reasons for disliking socialism, reasons that are far more banal and simple to understand that don't even involve economics. I don't need an "economic calculation problem" that applies against market economies just as much as it does against socialism, etc.
The funniest part about Austrian economics is that Austrians (the nation and their people) practiced Austrian economics all the way until the beginning of world war two, at which point the Austrian economists got kicked out by an Austrian and fled to the US.
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.
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!
Education tends toward public good will if the mission is to educate and improve learning outcomes.
I've been told there's tons of money in education! But the insight is the edtech stuff that makes money does not sell education. B2b up-skilling platforms for example sell the promise of higher earnings. Food safety, HR training sell compliance. College prep sells college acceptance, and so on.
The people with the foresight to pay for financial literacy will very likely already be financially literate.
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.
We got some, in home economics. Not sure that subject is really offered anymore?
That was mostly around budgeting. What we didn't get nearly enough of was time value of money, and the cost of credit/borrowing.
As a result a lot of people buy a car and it's just a payment. They have no idea what they are paying as a total price. They don't start a 401K because they have no concept how much difference compounding makes if you start saving when you are 22 vs. 50. Then they are upset when companies do stuff "to benefit stockholders" and never consider that they could have been a stockholder.
I tried to find a freemium option that didn't require me signing up or agreeing to spend $3.99 at some later date. Could be helpful to get more people deeper into the "funnel." Like maybe open up the first 1/x of one of the 22 lessons?
If that option is there I couldn't find it so consider that a single-user usability test or just user error.
This is a great use for privacy.com generated credit cards! Basically, you create a unique credit card number but set its budget to $1. They won't be able to start charging you until you raise the limit on the card. That's how I think all trials should work: requiring an additional confirmation to start charging you.
Also pretty ironic that this site is designed to trick you into paying for a subscription you've forgotten about...but that's the entire subscription/free trial economy of course.
You're forgoing the part of the sales cycle where you demonstrate what you are offering. It goes from telling me, briefly, to asking for a credit card.
I rarely to never give a credit card in exchange for a free trial. Not without some type of proof of concept, first.
It's like being asked for a credit card by someone who approaches me on the street and asks me to trust them.
Absent widespread recommendations, If I don't have a better idea of what I'm buying then I won't buy it.
Readit News
This looks like a pure money grab, vibe-coded in the shortest possible time with, likely, vibe-generated study material.
I dunno if you're joking (or only semi-serious), but, TBH, the largest number of "how to grow your business" courses are all based on how the author/presenter grew a business around a book/video/content called "how to grow your business".
A good example of this is the "Stacking the bricks"(sp?) thing. I looked into so many of these paid courses, and the only experience the author is demonstrating is "how to make money teaching a course on how to make money".
There's an entire, almost incestuous, industry around this, with each "business-person" referencing other business-people's success stories using their "how to grow your business" course in their own "how to grow your business" course, with testimonials from course-completers who made some money out of their own "How to grow your business" course.
From the outside, it looks almost looks like a pyramid, but on closer inspection it appears to be undirected cyclic graph.
[EDIT]
I expect all this to collapse soon, as the cost of producing this useless material is now approaching zero. This means that the participants in this network can now each "produce" new material on a minute by minute/hour by hour basis. When the production of a product is close to zero AND the utility to the consumer is also zero, there is no way for anyone in this network to make money anymore, because the new entrants will be so overloaded with choices (millions of different courses to choose from) that they may never enter the network at all.
Thanks for your feedback, and thank you for helping us make EconTeen better.
Beyond the investment wiki pages, it has other pages on personal finance.
It ranges from a pretty basic level up to more advanced.
Just solid, basic financial information that works for most people.
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.
You’re right. It wasn’t until I had any kind of real money that I had to actually learn financial literacy. I learned it as a kid but had completely forgotten because I grew up poor.
Listed Curricula: Budgeting • Saving • Banking • Credit • Investing • Insurance • Taxes • College Finance • Career Planning • Entrepreneurship • Economics • Consumer Rights
This is so broad that the important parts won't have sufficient detail to understand the foundations. I can almost guarantee you they won't have talked about fiat currency, or inflation aside from the macro perspective which won't connect to anything at the individual level (Micro).
If you want your kids to understand finance and by extension money you start with Mises on Human Action, then The Theory of Money and Credit, then Menger/Hayek, a review of Adam Smith's 5 volume set, and later Socialism.
One would think that a discussion about teaching teenagers would focus on teaching them a broader view instead of tunneling them in one specific direction that happens to antagonize socialism and then only at the end teach them about socialism. That sounds eerily close minded.
I have different reasons for disliking socialism, reasons that are far more banal and simple to understand that don't even involve economics. I don't need an "economic calculation problem" that applies against market economies just as much as it does against socialism, etc.
The funniest part about Austrian economics is that Austrians (the nation and their people) practiced Austrian economics all the way until the beginning of world war two, at which point the Austrian economists got kicked out by an Austrian and fled to the US.
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.
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!
I've been told there's tons of money in education! But the insight is the edtech stuff that makes money does not sell education. B2b up-skilling platforms for example sell the promise of higher earnings. Food safety, HR training sell compliance. College prep sells college acceptance, and so on.
The people with the foresight to pay for financial literacy will very likely already be financially literate.
I'm conflicted.
Btw, there's also money in actual learning things, look at eg music classes adults take just for their own sake.
(Of course, you could say that a guitar teacher is selling 'getting laid'. But that's perhaps going a bit too far.)
Right or wrong, that’s the aesthetic now.
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.
Most 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
We got some, in home economics. Not sure that subject is really offered anymore?
That was mostly around budgeting. What we didn't get nearly enough of was time value of money, and the cost of credit/borrowing.
As a result a lot of people buy a car and it's just a payment. They have no idea what they are paying as a total price. They don't start a 401K because they have no concept how much difference compounding makes if you start saving when you are 22 vs. 50. Then they are upset when companies do stuff "to benefit stockholders" and never consider that they could have been a stockholder.
Some people think companies should have moral obligations toward their workers and customers as well as stockholders and executives.
They can’t to any meaningful extent.
Compound interest still sucks when you don’t have a meaningful initial investment.
If that option is there I couldn't find it so consider that a single-user usability test or just user error.
Also pretty ironic that this site is designed to trick you into paying for a subscription you've forgotten about...but that's the entire subscription/free trial economy of course.
I'd be intrigued, but would quickly click away.
You're forgoing the part of the sales cycle where you demonstrate what you are offering. It goes from telling me, briefly, to asking for a credit card.
I rarely to never give a credit card in exchange for a free trial. Not without some type of proof of concept, first.
It's like being asked for a credit card by someone who approaches me on the street and asks me to trust them.
Absent widespread recommendations, If I don't have a better idea of what I'm buying then I won't buy it.