The Launchpad
Free through The Finance Lab
A personal finance course your students work through, and a dashboard that shows you where they are.
Six units and a capstone, built for California’s new personal finance requirement. Free for the 2026-27 school year.
What a class period looks like

What students learned
Fall 2026, one unit, one California public high school
average quiz score, before and after each module (157 students)
said they could afford a 4-year public university, after one lesson (152 students)
One unit, no comparison group. See the full results
“I hope more schools implement some part of this into their curriculum. It’s really important that students are educated on this early and regularly, not just their senior year with everything in the rear view.”
What makes it different
Built for California.
Students budget around real rents in their part of the state, from Fresno to Los Angeles. They read a pay stub with California’s SDI and state tax lines, learn how Cal Grant, the CADAA and the California Dream Act work, and see where California’s rules differ, like the state taxing HSA money and banning payday loan rollovers.
Online lessons, plus activities that get students talking.
40 modules students work through on their laptops. 24 Real Takes: short activities after a lesson that set up a class discussion. 13 Advisor Series cases, where students read one person’s real situation, make a recommendation in writing and then see how the whole class advised.
Families are part of it.
Before each unit starts, you send home a one-page letter in English or Spanish, already filled in with your name, school and email. It tells families what their student is learning and gives them three questions to start a conversation at home. It also says what we won’t ask students to share about their family’s money.
Data you can show.
Every module opens and closes with a short quiz and a confidence check, so you can show growth by student, by module and by question. The Big Three financial literacy questions on the first and last day put your class next to a national benchmark. Everything exports to a spreadsheet.
Quick answers
- Cost?
- Free for the 2026-27 school year.
- AB 2927?
- All 13 required topics mapped.
- Do I need a finance background?
- No. Every module comes with a short teacher playbook: what students do, the key ideas and the discussion questions. Each unit has a Words to Know list in English and Spanish. And your dashboard shows the question your class missed most, so you know what to go over the next day.
- All or part?
- A full semester with an 18-week pacing plan, or one unit inside your current class.
Try one module with one class.
Questions: team@thefinancelab.co




