Help & FAQ

The Long Game is a 15-lesson course that teaches kids 9 to 12 how money, business, and investing actually work, through stories, history, and games you do together. No real money is involved anywhere. It started as the course we wanted for our own kid, and every lesson gets tested at our kitchen table before it reaches yours.

Built for kids 9 to 12. Younger siblings can tag along with more help from you; teens will still learn plenty, but the stories and games are tuned for this window: the years when money habits actually form.

No, and that's the point. Every lesson hands you the exact question to ask at dinner and a plain-English briefing on what your kid just mastered. You're the co-pilot, not the instructor.

Just an account here and 20–30 minutes to sit down together for the first lesson. You don't need a brokerage account, a spreadsheet, or any prep. There is nothing to set up and nothing to connect.

Trading apps reward quick buys and sells; play-money games teach kids to gamble with fake dollars. We do the opposite. There are no tickers to chase and no leaderboard of who's up. The whole course points toward patient, long-term, buy-and-hold thinking, and toward understanding businesses rather than betting on prices.

Plan on 20–30 minutes per lesson, best done together. There are 15 lessons. There's no schedule pressure. The course waits for you.

Fifteen lessons, each built as three short 10-minute pieces so it fits a 9-year-old's attention span. Every lesson has a story hook, a hands-on activity, and a small "tool" your kid unlocks, like the Company Spotter, the Cost Hunter, or the News Detective. You can do a lesson in one sitting or spread it across a few evenings.

The arc runs from the basics (what money is, how people earn and choose, what a company and a stock are) through the forces that shape investing: inflation, compounding, fees, risk, why prices move, diversification, and index funds. It finishes with researching a real company, understanding the Roth IRA, spotting hype and scams, and reflecting on their own thinking. By the end they can reason about a real business like a junior analyst.

It's about how the whole everyday economy works: what money is, how businesses earn, why prices move, what fees and inflation quietly cost. Investing is one strand of the bigger story.

Completely. Most families do about one lesson a week, but nothing expires and nothing is locked to a calendar. Skip a week, do two in a weekend, or pause for a month. Your progress is saved and the course picks up where you left off.

Fifteen lessons, not an endless subscription. Each one takes 20 to 30 minutes, there is no schedule pressure, and a field exam gates each step so nobody drifts forward without really understanding. A course with an end is a course that can be finished.

The lessons are the foundation. Beyond them we're building ongoing rituals: a short weekly market brief written for kids, quarterly pitch cycles where your kid researches a new idea, and an investment journal that builds a multi-year record of their thinking. The goal is a habit that lasts for years.

Never. There are no real-money features, no balances, and no tickers, by design. This is education, not advice, and not a trading app for children.

No. Kids don't have logins, emails, or passwords here. You hold the account; your kid has a first-name-and-age profile inside it. That's a deliberate privacy and safety choice. It means there's no way for your child to be contacted or tracked.

No. There are no balances or dollar figures about your family anywhere in the product. The lessons talk in shares, percentages, and companies. Your kid is a junior analyst researching businesses, not a child being handed a dollar figure, and you stay in control of what money talk happens at home.

About 20–30 minutes, once a week, done shoulder-to-shoulder with you. The best parts happen off-screen, at dinner. It's the opposite of an app built to keep a kid scrolling.

The sweet spot is 9 to 12, but the course flexes. A curious 8-year-old can do it with more help from you; a 13-year-old will still pick up plenty, especially the research and Roth IRA lessons. You know your kid best, and the pacing and your involvement can adjust either way.

Kids have no login, no email, and no way to be contacted. A kid profile is just a first name and age. No kid-to-kid contact, no ads, anywhere. That's the whole design, and every piece of it is a deliberate COPPA-aligned choice.

As little as possible: a first name and age for the profile, plus lesson progress and quiz scores, plus anything you send us through the feedback box. No kid email, no location, no contacts, no behavioral ad tracking.

You give us a parent email address to sign in. For your child we store a first name, a birth month and year (never the day), an avatar choice, their lesson progress and quiz scores, and anything you send us through the feedback box. That is the whole list. There are no third-party trackers, nothing is sold to anyone, and there are no brokerage or real-money connections anywhere in the product. The privacy policy spells it out in plain English.

No ads, ever. That's a hard line for a product used by children. We don't sell your data. The plan is to be funded by families paying for the product, which keeps our incentives pointed at you, not advertisers.

Yes, and there's less of it than you might expect. We never connect to a bank or a brokerage, so there are no balances, holdings, or financial credentials in our system at all. The beta is free, so we don't handle card details either. Every account's data is isolated so one family can never see another's.

The Long Game is free while we're in beta. Full pricing arrives with v1, and beta families will get it first, along with a founding-family thank-you.

We're intentionally not putting a hard date on it. We'd rather get the lessons right than rush a launch. Beta families will hear about any change well in advance. No surprise charges.

It stays. Your account, your kid's completed lessons, ranks, and journal entries all carry over. Launching paid pricing won't wipe anything or lock you out mid-course.

Yes. Families who join during the beta get first access to pricing and a founding-family thank-you when v1 arrives. Being early counts for something here.

It means your kid proposes and you approve. Kids do the research and make the case; what you do with it is up to you. Each lesson gives you a plain-English briefing and a dinner-table question, so you can guide the conversation even if you've never invested a dollar yourself.

No. This is education, not advice: a curriculum for teaching kids how investing works. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any specific security, and no part of the product manages money or makes decisions for you. Any real investing choices are yours to make in your own accounts.

No. We explain how things like Roth IRAs, capital gains, and fees work in kid-friendly terms, but we're not accountants or tax advisors and none of it is tax advice for your situation. For anything specific to your family, check with a qualified professional.

Yes. Lesson 13 explains how a kid's Roth IRA works and why earned income matters, but the course never asks you to open one. Plenty of families treat those lessons as preparation for later. We're not tax advisors, so check specifics with a professional.

Yes. You can set up a profile for each of your kids under your one parent account, and each keeps their own progress, ranks, and journal. Siblings can move at their own pace through the same course.

Email us and you'll reach the builder, not a bot. We read every message, whether it's a bug, a confusing lesson, or an idea to make the course better. Feedback from early families is shaping what we build next.