Financial Education
Most personal-finance guidance is written for people who already have a cushion, then applied — untested — to people who don't. FAME builds its financial education the other way around: on the peer-reviewed evidence about what actually changes financial behavior, sequenced to the real decisions people face, and measured on what people do, not just what they know.
The program is designed around the design principles the research evidence converges on. Education is sequenced to real decisions — a teachable moment, not a semester. It leads with simple rules of thumb for learners earlier in their financial lives, and layers complexity only as it helps. It pairs every lesson with a concrete next step — pointing learners toward the free, public resources that already exist, like a low-fee account at a credit union, a nonprofit credit counselor, or the CFPB's consumer-complaint portal — because knowledge without a next step does less. And it sets honest expectations: incremental, measurable steps, never a promise to transform a financial life overnight.
The curriculum is channel-agnostic by design — built to be delivered through any mission-aligned partner, from community organizations and libraries to financial-counseling agencies, workforce programs, and schools. FAME provides the evidence-grounded content and the measurement tools; partners provide the channel and the relationship.
What sets it apart
Most programs measure what learners know, or what they say they intend to do. FAME's program is designed to measure what they actually do — using an established, validated behavior scale with follow-up over a year, and reporting knowledge and behavior side by side, including where behavior moves only a little. The honesty is the point.
A distinctive, forward-looking module on the consumer-protection frontier no standard curriculum covers: AI tools that pose as advisors, algorithmic lending and your rights when an algorithm says no, AI-generated scams and deepfakes, and offers personalized to your most vulnerable moment.
An optional, ungraded reflection drawn from the institute's Maturity Type Indicator (MTI) research — a psychometric instrument under development — that helps learners notice their own financial tendencies through six bond-inspired archetypes, and meet how bonds work along the way. A reflection, not a test.
The curriculum runs as a 16-week program at each of four levels — meeting a learner where they are and carrying them forward. A short placement check routes each learner to the right starting level; each level scaffolds on the one before.
Stability
Banking access, a spending plan that survives a tight month, a starter emergency buffer, and recognizing high-cost-credit traps and scams.
Building
Credit building and debt payoff, your rights with collectors, saving systems, insurance basics, a first investment, and deeper consumer protection.
Growth
Investing, retirement strategy, taxes, major purchases like housing and vehicles, advanced credit and risk management, and estate basics.
Mastery & coaching
Deep personal-finance competence plus the skills to teach and coach others — behavioral finance, the evidence base, coaching technique, and the ethics of doing it well.
Every meeting is a two-hour, decision-anchored session: it opens with a real decision and one memorable rule of thumb, keeps the lecture short and the practice long, and ends by connecting the learner to a free resource and one concrete behavior to try before the next week. Sessions reinforce prior weeks by design, and the program is measured on behavior — at the start, the end, and again a year and two years later.
Across the levels, the program works through the real decisions that shape a financial life — each anchored to a memorable rule of thumb.
“Bank where it's free to keep your money.”
“Pay essentials first; give every dollar a job.”
“Compare the APR; pay more than the minimum.”
“If you can't buy it twice, you can't afford it on BNPL.”
“Save first, automatically, even if it's small.”
“Slow down — a legitimate offer survives a night's sleep.”
“Get the full match — it's free money.”
“If a screen is rushing you, or it's too personal to be real, slow down.”
Plus an optional, ungraded financial-decision style reflection — a private thinking aid and a first look at how bonds work. It is not scored, not collected, and not a validated assessment.
The same evidence-based modules adapt to two audiences. Under-resourced adults work through the real decisions of banking access, credit and debt, high-cost credit traps, saving, scams, and retirement — each paired with free, public, nonprofit resources. Youth in grades 9–12 meet the same skills at the firsts that shape a financial life — a first paycheck, a first account, the first credit-card offers — with materials that collect no personal data and are built for a classroom or program setting.
The program runs two ways. A facilitator guide lets a partner's staff or volunteers deliver any module without a specialized credential. Self-serve worksheets — printable, one page each, collecting no personal information — let a learner or partner use the material on their own. Partners choose the modules and the order that fit their learners' live decisions.
The program is built on the peer-reviewed research on financial education — the meta-analyses that show, honestly, that knowledge moves more than behavior, that timing and simplification matter, and that the populations the field most wants to serve are the ones the usual approaches reach least. That evidence base, and the institute's own research, anchor every design choice. FAME's published research is available on the Papers page.