Money,
explained.
You use it every day. Almost no-one understands where it came from, why it loses value, or how to keep it. Five minutes a day. Thirty days. Four short quizzes. By the end, you'll see money the way the people who print it do.
In 1971, a loaf of bread was 9p. Today it's £1.50.
The bread didn't change.
Same flour. Same water. Same yeast. Same loaf on the kitchen table. But the pound got quietly smaller — year by year, decade by decade — until it took more than 15× as many of them to buy the same bread. That's what this course is about.
Spoiler: had your parents held 9p of gold instead of the coin, today it would still buy that loaf — with plenty of change. We'll get there in week 2.
From cave-rocks to crypto.
Money has been many things. Cattle. Shells. Salt. Gold. Paper. Pixels. Each one taught us something — and we'll walk through them all.
Four weeks. Four a-ha moments.
Each lesson is a single, short, plain-English read. End of every week: a quick quiz to lock the ideas in.
What money actually is
Forget what your bank tells you. We start with first principles — what makes a thing "money" in the first place?
How money got unhooked
How the world quietly went off the gold standard, and why your savings have been melting ever since.
Where new money comes from
Spoiler: it's mostly typed into a computer. We'll demystify central banks, QE, and the Cantillon effect.
How to protect yours
Now you know how the system works — what do you do about it? A calm, practical look at sound-money options.
Five minutes. One idea. No homework.
Every day we open with a question, give you the simplest possible answer, and end with one fact you'll repeat at dinner.
Why couldn't we just keep using cows?
Today's question sounds silly. The answer reveals exactly what money is for.
For thousands of years, people did use cattle as money. The Latin word for money, pecunia, literally comes from pecus — cattle. But cows are awful at one specific job: making change. You can't pay 1.4 cows for a pair of shoes. They also walk off, get sick, and grow old.
Good money has to be divisible, durable, and portable. Cows fail all three. We'll see tomorrow why gold nailed all six properties for 5,000 years.
The word "salary" comes from salarium — the Roman ration of salt paid to soldiers. For a while, you really were "worth your salt".
Wait, really?
A small taste. The course has dozens more.
Ready to see it?
Sign up free, work through one lesson at a time, and test yourself with a quick quiz at the end of each week. No spam, no upsell, no jargon — and you can pause whenever you want.
Sign up & start Day 1