New book
Money is the one subject school forgets to teach. Let’s fix that.
Mr. 401(k)’s Principles of Financial Literacy is a plain-English guide to money, markets, and the modern economy, written for capable teenagers and young adults, and for the parents and teachers who guide them.
Get notified at launch Free guide for teachers and parents
Kindle, paperback, and hardcover · Coming fall 2026
What it is
Most money books jump straight to budgets and tips. This one starts with a better question: what is money, really? Once that clicks, the paycheck, the credit card, the index fund, and the mortgage all begin to make sense.
Every claim is shown with the math, so you never have to take a number on faith. When the book shows a teenager growing $1.9 million by retirement, it also shows what that is really worth in today’s dollars: about $420,000.
Read it straight through, or jump to what you need today. Enrolling in your first 401(k) this week? Start with Chapters 16 and 17, the investing and retirement-account chapters, then let the rest of the book explain why they work. And if you are decades past your first paycheck, you are still in the right place. The book starts with what money actually is, the lesson most of us never got.
What’s inside
From the first dollar of history to the dollars in your pocket, the book builds real understanding one plain-English chapter at a time:
- How money gets its value, and why prices and the money supply keep rising
- The three ways to make money, and which one builds lasting wealth
- Budgeting, taxes, and the difference between what you earn and what you keep
- Assets, debt, net worth, and how banks actually create money
- Bitcoin, explained plainly: what it is, how it works, and what to make of it
- Inflation, interest, and the most powerful force in finance: time
- Whether college is worth its cost, run as real numbers
- How to start investing, choose funds, avoid fees, and use retirement accounts
- A step-by-step business-plan project that puts the whole book to work
- And the whole plan on one page, small enough to copy onto an index card
Who it’s for
Teens and young adults facing a first paycheck, a first credit card, or a first benefits packet
Parents who want their kids to learn this early, instead of the hard way at forty
Teachers and homeschoolers who want a standards-mapped text, not another worksheet
For educators
Built in a classroom. Ready for yours.
The book is mapped, benchmark by benchmark, to the National Standards for Personal Financial Education from the Council for Economic Education and the Jump$tart Coalition, and it covers all six national topic areas: earning, spending, saving, investing, managing credit, and managing risk. With its capstone business-plan project, it works as a ready-to-teach unit, not just a reading.
A free companion guide for teachers and parents includes the full standards map, discussion prompts, and the one-page plan.
Born in a real classroom
This book did not start as a book. It started as a course.
Since 2022, Petros has volunteered teaching financial literacy to middle school students, who know him as Mr. 401(k). The book grew out of that classroom, and the course itself remains free and openly licensed for any teacher, parent, or student who wants it.
About the author
Petros Koumantaros has spent his career helping working people build secure retirements. He leads retirement plan businesses now part of an organization serving 3.6 million plan participants, has testified before the United States Senate on improving retirement savings, and serves as a Governor-appointed member of Washington State’s Washington Saves Governing Board. Students in his volunteer financial literacy course know him as Mr. 401(k). He wrote the book he wishes someone had handed him at fourteen.
Learn it. Earn it. Own it. Grow it.
If you want the head start no one gave you, start here.
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