First pay. First bills. First plan of their own.
Independent money skills for work, study and adult life
A planning app for sixteen-to-eighteens, built for the phone in their pocket. Income that arrives weekly, fortnightly or monthly. Commitments with real due dates. A first buffer. And the practical checks that come with a first job, a first contract and a first place of their own.
In final release testing · one-time purchase, no subscription · a planning tool, not a bank and not financial advice
Secure payment via Stripe · GBP/USD/EUR/AUD/CAD available · One-time payment · No subscription
See it working
Sixty seconds inside the planner.
Real screens from the finished app, recorded on the phone it was designed for. No sound needed — the captions carry it.
- Setting up takes three steps
Age band, then currency and country — chosen, never guessed from a location. No account, no email, no sign-in.
- Income that arrives unevenly
Weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual, resolved into one honest monthly picture. Money that isn’t confirmed stays out of the plan until it is.
- The plan, in the order that protects them
Commitments with due dates first, then set-asides for costs that land later, then flexible spending. The buffer is shown as months covered — the number that actually answers “am I alright?”
- Tools run on their real numbers
The First Paycheque Planner splitting a first wage. The Moving-Out Budget answering the question rent alone never does: does this still hold in ninety days?
Read the transcript instead
Captions appear on screen throughout. All figures shown are example amounts typed into the app during the recording.
The Slow Money Planner, Ages 16–18. First pay. First bills. First plan of their own.
Setting up. Setting up takes three steps — no account, no email, no sign-in. The opening screen reads “Your money. Your plan. Your business.” and states that everything stays on the device: no account, no bank connection, no ads, and nobody — parents, schools, anyone — sees the numbers unless they choose to share them. Then two questions: an age band, 16–17 or 18, and what is closest to their life right now — working, studying, training, looking for work, planning a move, mixed, or not sure yet.
Choosing, not guessing. Currency and country are chosen, never guessed from a location. The screen says so directly: “We never detect your location — you choose it, and every local rule is labelled with where it applies.” A starting point is picked — plan my next pay, organise my bills, build a starter buffer, prepare to move out, practice mode, or just explore.
Today. One screen: what is left to plan, and how long the buffer lasts. It shows an amount available to plan — labelled a plan figure, not a bank balance — a state of covered, tight or short, the next confirmed money and its date, and the buffer expressed in months of essentials covered, with the line “That number is yours — nobody else’s business.” Underneath: how the figure was calculated, one suggested next step, and what is coming up.
Income. Income at whatever rhythm it really arrives — weekly, fortnightly, monthly. A fortnightly weekend-job take-home sits alongside irregular babysitting money. The heading is explicit: only confirmed or received money counts in totals, estimates are shown but never assumed. Money that is not confirmed is shown, but never counted — the babysitting row is marked “not in totals”.
Bills. Bills with real due dates, seen before the spending rather than after — phone, bus pass, driving lessons, gym — each with its frequency, its due date, and a priority the user sets themselves, never one the app assigns.
Set-asides. Set-asides hold back what is coming later. Small and steady: a first-year car insurance bill part-funded months ahead of its due date, and a smaller Christmas fund, each showing progress against a target and an amount per pay.
The buffer. The buffer in months covered — the number that answers “am I alright?” The plan overview repeats it as an estimate to inform, not a score to chase, and offers CSV, print, duplicate and delete.
The tools. Eight tools for the decisions that actually turn up: First Paycheque & Set-Aside Planner; Work, Study & Training Route Comparison; Moving-Out Budget & First-90-Days Test; Contract, Credit & Subscription Check; Banking, Scam & Identity Safety Plan; Investing & Pension Foundations Check; Adult Transition Money Map; and the Bridge 12-Month Plan.
First Paycheque. The advert number and the arriving number are not the same. A gross figure and an estimated deduction are typed in, and the tool splits what actually lands — with every step shown, and a note that deduction rates depend on where you live and how much you earn.
Moving out. Rent is the headline; the first month is the real bill. Rent, deposit and setup costs give the cash needed to move in; then monthly bills, food, transport and reliable take-home income. Then it asks the question rent never does: does it hold for ninety days? The 90-day test returns a monthly position after essentials, a position after ninety days, and a plain verdict — in this example, that the numbers hold, with a note that a buffer for month four would make it sturdy. A share card can be produced with no amounts on it.
The Bridge. Responsibility handed over in stages, with a backup. Three phases across twelve months — mini-adulting, real-world practice, simulated adulthood — each responsibility carrying a choice the young person controls, a boundary, and a backup if it goes wrong. Summaries can be shared without amounts.
Safety. When something feels wrong: stop, secure, tell, contact. Four steps in order, opening with “Pause — rushing is what they want” and “Not your fault”.
Closing. Everything stays on their phone. No account. No bank connection. No tracking. One-time purchase, no subscription.
What’s inside
Five areas. One phone. No account.
The workbooks teach the thinking on paper. The planner is where it meets a real wage, a real due date and a real decision — owned by them, on the device they already use.
Today
One screen answering one question: is this month alright? A buffer measured in months covered, the next thing worth doing, and what’s coming up — with no invented urgency when there’s nothing to do.
Plan
Income at any frequency, commitments with due dates, set-asides for costs that arrive later, and flexible spending as the remainder. Seven planning modes, so it fits a Saturday job as well as a full wage.
Bridge
The staged handover of money responsibility from adult to young adult — three phases across twelve months, each with a choice, a boundary and a backup. Shareable as a summary that contains no amounts.
Learn
Ten short modules built on realistic situations rather than definitions — a first payslip, a bank asking for a code, a contract with a term buried in it. Nothing is scored.
Safety
A calm four-step response — stop, secure, tell, contact — plus financial coercion, kept visible rather than hidden behind a search. UK, US and Australian support lines, each with the date it was checked.
Eight practical tools
First paycheque, route comparison, moving out, contracts and credit, banking safety, investing foundations, the money map and the Bridge plan — each one a worksheet that does the arithmetic.
The tools
Eight decisions, worked through properly.
Each one takes a decision that usually gets made on a guess, and turns it into arithmetic they can see.
| Tool | What it settles |
|---|---|
| First Paycheque & Set-Aside Planner | Gross against net, what the deductions actually were, and where the first real wage goes — adjusted in five-percent steps, with flexible spending as whatever is left. |
| Work, Study & Training Route Comparison | The money shape of each path side by side — cost, support, what can be earned during it, and where it tends to lead. Not which is cheapest. |
| Moving-Out Budget & First-90-Days Test | Rent is the headline; the first month is the real bill. Deposit, setup costs, bills, food, transport — then whether it still holds after ninety days. |
| Contract, Credit & Subscription Check | Three questions before signing anything: the monthly payment, the total across the whole term, and what happens on a missed payment. |
| Banking, Scam & Identity Safety Plan | A personal defence checklist, built on the rule that holds everywhere: nobody legitimate needs your password or your one-time code. |
| Investing & Pension Foundations Check | The groundwork before anyone sells them anything — including why a guaranteed high return is a scam signature, not an opportunity. |
| Adult Transition Money Map | Where their money life is now, and what the next stage actually asks of them. |
| Bridge 12-Month Plan | The staged handover written down, phase by phase, so both sides know what has moved across and what hasn’t. |
Learn
Ten modules. Situations, not definitions.
Each one opens with someone their age in a situation they’ll recognise — Leah’s first weekend job, Dev getting a message that looks like his bank, Jaz signing for a flat-share — and ends with the tool that handles it. There are no right-answer scores, because a wrong answer is information, not a verdict.
- 01Independence and the Bridge
- 02Work, pay and deductions
- 03Everyday banking and payments
- 04Monthly planning, bills and buffers
- 05Credit, borrowing and consequential contracts
- 06Study, training and work routes
- 07Rent, moving out and shared costs
- 08Insurance and consumer protection
- 09Saving, investing and pension foundations
- 10Scams, identity and financial coercion
The Bridge
Handing money over in stages, not all at once.
Most families hand over financial responsibility in one go, at eighteen, and hope. The Bridge does it in three phases across a year, with every responsibility written down as a choice they make, a boundary they work inside, and a backup if it goes wrong. Nobody has to guess what was agreed.
- Mini-adulting
A few categories inside clear limits — personal spending, travel, phone, saving, one agreed commitment.
- Real-world practice
A wider plan, real tracking, one irregular cost, using a buffer — and a review with an adult as adviser rather than controller.
- Simulated adulthood
An Adult Practice Budget with realistic categories. Household bills stay simulated unless a real contribution is safe, affordable and agreed by everyone.
Privacy
Their money stays on their phone.
This is a teenager’s financial life, so the design starts from what it refuses to do. There is no account and no sign-in. There is no bank connection — nothing is ever linked to a real account. There is no analytics and no tracking, and the app makes no third-party requests at all: even the fonts are served from the app itself.
Everything they enter is stored on their own device and nowhere else. They can export it as a file, print it, or delete all of it in one action. Nothing they write is visible to us, and nothing is visible to a parent unless they choose to show it — the Bridge summary they can share deliberately contains no amounts.
It has been built to meet WCAG 2.2 AA, and the app carries its own accessibility statement.
Format & access
A web app that behaves like a real one.
| You receive | Details |
|---|---|
| The planner itself | Opens in the browser on any modern phone, tablet or computer — iPhone, Android, Mac or Windows. Nothing to install from an app store, no store account needed. |
| Add to home screen | It installs to the home screen like an app and works offline once opened, because nothing it does needs a server. |
| Currencies | Choose the currency and country at setup — UK, US and Australian support and guidance links are built in, each showing when it was last checked. |
| Your data, portable | Export as JSON or CSV, print any plan, restore from a backup file, or delete everything in one action. |
| One-time payment | Not a subscription. Bought once, for the years it’s needed. |
For personal and household use only · please do not resell or redistribute access.
For parents
You’re the adviser here, not the auditor.
At sixteen, surveillance stops working — it just moves the money somewhere you can’t see. So the planner gives you the opposite: a structure to talk inside. The Bridge sets out what has been handed over and what hasn’t, in writing, so the conversation is about a plan rather than a suspicion. You see what they choose to show you.
If you want the parent-side view of these years, Raising Money-Confident Kids covers them from your side of the table.
Why not a budgeting app?
Budgeting apps assume the money already makes sense.
Almost every money app is built for someone with a salary, a bank feed and a settled set of bills. A seventeen-year-old has none of that: pay lands at odd intervals, half the income isn’t confirmed, the big costs are one-offs nobody warned them about, and connecting a bank account isn’t appropriate anyway.
This is built for that stage specifically — and for the decisions that come with it, which no budgeting app addresses at all: which route to take after school, whether a contract is affordable across its whole term, and what the first month somewhere new actually costs.
It is the step after the Ages 13–15 workbook, whose final sections — earning, payslips, borrowing, digital safety — run straight into it.
Age fit
Is 16–18 the right stage?
Choose the planner when money is genuinely theirs to manage — a job, a college or apprenticeship decision, a first contract, a first thought about moving out. If they’re still mostly learning the ideas rather than living them, Ages 13–15 is the better starting point, and it leads here.
The Slow Money Planner · Ages 16–18
The app is in final release testing. Join the launch list and you’ll hear the day it opens — one email, nothing else, and no charge until then.
One-time purchase when it opens · no subscription
The Slow Money Planner · Ages 16–18
Five areas, eight tools and ten learn modules. Instant access, on any device.
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Younger ones at home too?
The Complete Ages 3–15 Collection covers every earlier stage — all four workbooks, for less than buying them separately.
Secure payment via Stripe · GBP/USD/EUR/AUD/CAD available · One-time payment · No subscription
Questions
Parents usually ask.
Does it connect to their bank account?
No, and it never will. There is no bank connection, no open-banking feed and no payment function anywhere in it. Everything is entered by hand, which is deliberate: entering it is how the numbers become real to them.
Where is their information stored?
On their own device, and nowhere else. There is no account, no sign-in and no server holding their data. We can’t see what they enter, because it never reaches us.
Can I see what they’ve put in?
Only what they show you. That’s a design decision, not an oversight — at this age a tool they don’t trust is a tool they stop using. The Bridge gives you the shared structure instead: what’s been handed over, what the boundaries are, and what the backup is.
Will it work on their phone?
Yes — it was designed phone-first and tested on real handsets. It opens in the browser and can be added to the home screen on iPhone or Android, where it works offline. No app store account is needed.
Is this financial advice?
No. It’s financial education and a planning tool. It isn’t a bank, a lender, an investment service or a payment app, it names no providers or products, and it doesn’t give personalised or regulated advice. Real account and legal decisions stay with the adults involved.
Which countries does it suit?
The planning works anywhere — currency and country are chosen at setup, never guessed. Support and guidance links are provided for the UK, the US and Australia, each showing the date it was last checked. Elsewhere, everything except those local links applies as written.
Do they need the workbooks first?
No. The planner stands alone. The Ages 13–15 workbook builds the groundwork if you have time for it, but a sixteen-year-old with a job can start here.
Is it a subscription?
No. One payment, for the years it’s needed. There’s no renewal and no upsell inside it.
Practice before the stakes are real.
Every earlier stage is available today.
Secure payment via Stripe · GBP/USD/EUR/AUD/CAD available · One-time payment · No subscription
Slow Money products are financial education, not regulated financial advice. Digital products — see our refund policy.