Help
“I have a problem right now.” Pick a situation, reach for a reference tool, or search across every lesson and topic.
Situations & playbooks
Step-by-step guides for a specific problem, separate from the weekly path. Reach for one when you need it.
When money is hard
After a Disaster: The Financial Recovery Steps
A hurricane, flood, wildfire, tornado, or other disaster can upend your finances in a single day — and the recovery, while genuinely hard, follows a…
Read →Identity theftIdentity Theft: The Recovery Sequence
*When someone steals your identity, the hard part usually isn’t realizing it’s bad — it’s knowing what to do, in what order, and fast, while you’re…
Read →Paying for collegePaying for College: Financial Aid, Borrowing, and Repayment
Paying for college is one of the largest financial commitments most people ever take on — and unlike a mortgage, it’s often decided at seventeen…
Read →Medical billsThe Medical-Bill Survival Guide
A reference module for when you’re facing a medical bill that’s confusing, surprising, denied, wrong, or simply more than you can pay…
Read →When you can’t payWhen You Genuinely Cannot Pay
Sometimes the money simply isn’t there — not because of a bad choice, but because income dropped, an emergency hit, or the bills outran the paycheck…
Read →Buying & big-ticket
Buying a Car Without Getting Taken
A car is the second-largest lifetime expense most households have, after housing — and the buying process, in most of the United States, is…
Read →Buying a houseBuying a House: What It Costs and How the Money Works
Buying a home is, for most people who do it, the largest purchase and the largest loan of their life — and the part that surprises people is rarely…
Read →Renters’ rightsRenters’ Rights and Security Deposits
This is for the tens of millions of people who rent right now and want to keep more of their money and avoid being taken advantage of…
Read →Renting vs. buyingRenting vs. Buying a Home
“Renting is throwing money away” is one of the most repeated pieces of money advice in America — and it’s misleading…
Read →A purchase went wrongWhen a Purchase Goes Wrong: Returns, Warranties, and Disputes
A reference module for when you’ve bought something and it went wrong — it’s broken or defective, it never arrived, it’s not what was described, the…
Read →Earning & taxes
Self-Employment and Gig Income
More people than ever earn money outside a traditional paycheck — freelancing, driving, delivering, selling, consulting, running a side business…
Read →Tax seasonTax Season: Filing, Free Help, and Avoiding Scams
Most adult Americans spend money every year filing taxes that they didn’t need to spend — and miss credits worth real money in the process…
Read →Spending smarter
Getting Banked: Opening (or Reopening) a Bank Account
*Going without a bank account is more common than people think — roughly 1 in 25 U.S…
Read →Manufactured habitsManufactured Habits: How Marketing Became “Tradition” — and the Pause-Before-You-Buy Filter
This is a calm, optional companion to the rest of the course — awareness, not a rulebook…
Read →NegotiatingNegotiating: Bills, Prices, Pay, and Fees
A surprising amount of what people treat as a fixed price is actually a starting offer — a medical bill, a car, a salary, a monthly internet rate, a…
Read →Planning a tripPlanning a Trip: What It Costs and How to Budget for One
A trip is one of the more satisfying things a person can spend money on — and also one of the easiest to misjudge, because the headline price you see…
Read →Life & relationships
Couples and Money
Almost nobody is taught how to share money with another person, yet it's one of the highest-stakes skills a relationship has — money is consistently…
Read →DivorceDivorce and Money
Divorce is one of the most financially destabilizing events in adult life — it splits one household’s income and assets into two, under emotional…
Read →Having kidsHaving Kids and Money: What It Costs and How to Plan for the Early Years
Deciding to have a child is one of the largest financial shifts a household can go through, and it lands in an area already loaded with anxiety…
Read →Major life eventsMajor Life Events: Financial Playbooks
Certain life events predictably strain finances, and each comes with a relatively short checklist of things to do, in roughly the right order, that…
Read →Sudden moneySudden Money: A Windfall Playbook
*A windfall is any sudden, sizable sum you didn’t earn over time — an inheritance, a legal settlement, an insurance payout, a lottery or gambling…
Read →Retiring soonThe Retirement Transition: What to Decide, and in What Order
Retiring isn’t one decision — it’s a cluster of them, made within a year or two of each other, several of them permanent…
Read →WeddingsWeddings and Money: What a Wedding Costs and How to Budget for One
A wedding is, for many couples, the first large shared financial project they take on together — and much of the wedding industry is built around…
Read →When someone diesWhen Someone Dies: A Financial Checklist
The death of someone close is one of the hardest things a person goes through, and it arrives bundled with financial and administrative tasks at the…
Read →Tools & reference
Keep-handy tools and background reading you’ll come back to — not part of any one week.
Personal records organizer
A one-page map of where every important financial document lives — so you, or someone helping you, can find things fast.
Open →ReferenceOfficial source list
The primary, authoritative places to verify anything — government agencies and regulators, all free and not selling you anything.
Open →ReferenceHow to check a money “fact”
A simple, repeatable method for checking whether a money claim is actually true before you act on it.
Open →ReferenceFree help directory
Where to find free, legitimate help — legal aid, nonprofit credit counseling, and official hotlines — for when money gets hard.
Open →ReferenceFun facts compendium
Where the “normal” features of money and credit actually came from. Surprisingly recent, and surprisingly deliberate.
Open →ReferenceCommon mistakes
The money mistakes that recur across the whole course, gathered in one short list to re-read now and then.
Open →ReferenceWhen to get professional help
Where general education stops and a professional should step in — bankruptcy, lawsuits, tax debt, estate planning — and who to contact.
Open →Trusted official sources
When a real decision is on the line, these are the primary, authoritative places to go — free, and not trying to sell you anything.