In partnership with HPAIR
Finance taught
by doing it
for real.
FinLit is a live, mentor-led, AI-native finance program for students in grades 5–12, built by Learn with Leaders. Over eight Saturdays, every fellow works with Harvard student mentors at a 1:20 ratio and ships one real finance project, which they then defend live to a panel. There are two tracks: Explorer for grades 5–8 and Strategist for grades 9–12.
Students leave school
never having decided.
Most finance education stops at definitions. A student can name compound interest and still never have built a budget, priced a business, read a filing or been asked to defend a number out loud. FinLit exists to close that gap with real work.
Theory without practice
Vocabulary is testable, judgment is not. So judgment is what usually gets skipped. We put the decision first and the definition second.
Nothing to show
A worksheet is not a portfolio. Every fellow finishes with an artefact they can hand to a teacher, a parent or an admissions reader.
AI used as a shortcut
Students already use AI. Rather than banning it, we grade how honestly and critically they use it, in writing, week by week.
No one to ask
The gap most students face is access to someone a few years ahead of them who has actually done the work. That is what the mentors are for.
Live, mentor-led,
AI-native.
Every session follows the same shape: a hook, a concept, an AI lab and a mentor review. Read the full week-by-week curriculum →
Live only
Eight Saturdays of real-time work. No pre-recorded modules to click through alone.
Harvard student mentors at 1:20
Small-group leads sit with fellows through every lab and review each artefact before the panel sees it.
Two tracks
Explorer, grades 5–8: money, income, budgeting, dark patterns, compounding, banks and credit. Strategist, grades 9–12: investing, portfolio stress-tests, reading 10-Ks, entrepreneurship, fraud and taxes.
The AI Workbook
Fellows record what they prompted, what the model returned, and what they kept, cut or rewrote. Judgment is graded, not output.
One rubric, start to finish
Judgment, Rigour, Clarity, Honesty. The same four axes from Week 1 to the live capstone defence.
Shipped, then defended
Week 8 is a live defence in front of a mentor panel: real questions, no slides to hide behind.
The proof is
the work itself.
Not a certificate of attendance. Real artefacts, built over eight weeks and defended out loud. You can read them in The Lab.
Budgeting tools
A working 12-month money plan, built and stress-tested by the student.
Investment theses
A written case for an asset or a portfolio, with the risks stated rather than hidden.
Fee teardowns
Credit-card and product fine print pulled apart to find where the money actually goes.
Venture pitches
A business model, pricing and unit economics, plus the five hardest objections answered.
Scam detectors
Real fraud scripts dissected into the signals that give them away.
An AI Workbook
A written record of how the student worked with AI, and where they overruled it.
Built by
Learn with Leaders.
FinLit is built by Learn with Leaders, which has worked with 3,000+ students across 1,150+ schools in 200+ countries through its programs. Those figures describe the parent company's work across all of its programs, not the FinLit fellowship on its own. FinLit itself is a live personal finance course for teens — eight Saturdays, eight shipped artefacts, one defended capstone.
The mission
Give school students access to the people, tools and standards of the university world while they are still in school, and ask them to produce real work with it.
Why FinLit was founded
Money is the one subject every student will use and almost none get to practise. FinLit was created to teach it the way it is actually lived: decisions made under uncertainty, then defended.
In partnership with HPAIR
FinLit runs in partnership with the Harvard College Project for Asian and International Relations, and mentors are Harvard students.
Schools and educators
Schools run FinLit as a cohort on their own calendar, with per-student pricing quoted in a written proposal. See For educators.
Come and build
something real.
Read the week-by-week curriculum, browse The Lab, or write to team@learnwithleaders.com with any question about the fellowship.