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Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF)
By Next Gen Personal Finance, a California nonprofit. Visit Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF)
Desk research from the maker's own pages. Not yet tried by us. Checked 2026-10-24.
A free money-skills curriculum for middle and high school. Teachers get full semester, full-year and middle-school courses, plus units on budgeting, credit, investing, taxes, insurance and paying for college. Students do the lessons in class, play short browser games in the NGPF Arcade (keep a budget, survive the 'Wheel of Bummers', play a loan shark), try an investing simulator and answer a daily money question. Teachers must prove they are teachers to unlock answer keys and tests.
Our take: A strong pick for schools and homeschool co-ops teaching personal finance to teens; parents wanting a self-guided kids' app should look elsewhere.
Checked in a browser
A browser check on 2026-10-25: what loads, the ads and trackers we saw, and what a child meets first. Not a hands-on test.
| Child safety: 4 out of 5 | No ads or chat; Log in and Sign Up prompts for a teacher account, and links to news sites. |
|---|---|
| Data: 3 out of 5 | Google ad servers loaded with an embedded YouTube video, plus Amplitude and FullStory session analytics and Google Analytics. |
| Ease: 3 out of 5 | A teacher site; the materials are behind a free teacher account, and a cookie notice covers the bottom of the screen. |
| Cost honesty: 5 out of 5 | '100% free'; no paid upgrade seen. |
What we found
- Contacted 15 outside sites; known: doubleclick.net, Amplitude, FullStory and Google Analytics/Tag Manager.
- Set 8 cookies, with third-party cookies from doubleclick.net and SurveyMonkey.
- Page text: 'To access all this and more, create a free teacher account'.
- Links out to news sites (Bloomberg, CNBC, NYT, FT).
From the test: A free personal-finance curriculum for teachers to run; teens use it through a class, not on their own.
| Ages it suits | about 11-18 (middle and high school) |
|---|---|
| What its terms say about age | The terms say a minor's use is covered by the terms and the parent or guardian accepts that. The privacy policy says children under 13 should get consent from a parent, guardian or teacher, and NGPF does not collect personal information from them. Full accounts are only for verified teachers. (terms) |
| Price | Free. Free, including courses, games and teacher training (Oct 2026). A free teacher account, checked against a school directory or badge, unlocks answer keys and assessments. |
| Works on | Web |
| Account | No account needed |
| Ads | None |
| In-app purchases | None |
| The AI in it | No AI. |
What's good
- Completely free, with no ads
- Covers real-life money topics teens rarely get elsewhere
- Short games come with worksheets and reflection questions
- Has a published study of student gains
Watch for
- Built for teachers; a family at home gets less without a teacher account
- Some Arcade games are run by outside groups (one was down in Oct 2026)
- School filters sometimes block the games
- The study measured before and after, not against a comparison group
Data and privacy
The privacy policy says accounts collect a teacher's name, email and school, NGPF does not collect personal information from children under 13, and it does not sell personal data for others' marketing. It uses Google Analytics for site traffic. Read the privacy policy.
Does it work?
One peer-reviewed study: Filbeck, Pettner and Zhao (2026, Journal of Economic Education) looked at 5,838 high school students in 354 schools and found test scores rose from 47.5 to 68.1 after an NGPF course. It compared before and after; NGPF's write-up does not describe a control group.
In the Big Index
- On the list 23 best free online courses for teens
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Where these facts come from
- https://www.ngpf.org/
- https://www.ngpf.org/terms/
- https://www.ngpf.org/privacy/
- https://www.ngpf.org/arcade/
- https://www.ngpf.org/blog/advocacy/the-research-is-in-ngpf-curriculum-helped-students-improve-on-every-measure-tested/
Prices, terms and features change. Nobody paid to be listed, nothing here is an affiliate link, and Peabody never rates itself. Where we and the maker disagree, the maker's own pages are the ones to trust.