Free money education · for curious beginners
Money is never neutral.
Learn who it works for. Short video lessons and free printables on money, banking, Bitcoin and power, with every number sourced.
Mara recommends · where it started
Bitcoin: The End of Money as We Know It
A movie about money: where it comes from, who controls it, and why that matters to you.
the film that inspired Money with Mara.
Watch the documentary on YouTubeStart here
Four series, one path
Barter, gold, paper, digital. What makes money good, and who decides.
Start here CHAPTER 02 Inflation Is More Than PricesWhy your paycheck buys less, in dollars and in minutes of work.
CHAPTER 03 The $40 Trillion QuestionDeficit vs. debt, who we owe, and who pays the interest.
CHAPTER 04 Bitcoin 101What it is, how to think about a strategy, and how to secure it.
U.S. national debt · live estimate
$40,047,425,768,420
How this works: it starts from the Treasury's official $40,047,425,768,420 on Aug. 18, 2026 and adds debt at the full fiscal year 2026 deficit pace ($1.99 trillion over 365 days, CBO Monthly Budget Review, Oct. 8, 2026). An estimate for scale, not an official count.
usdebtclock.org is an independent site, not affiliated with Money with Mara.
Have we been here before?
Debt held by the public, as a share of the economy
Follow the new money
U.S. M2 money supply
Cash, checking, savings and other easy-to-reach dollars. One trillion is 1,000 billion.
added between Feb. and Dec. 2020 alone, a 23% jump in ten months
Source: Federal Reserve via FRED, M2 money stock (M2SL), seasonally adjusted, nominal dollars. December of each year; latest July 2026.
Then vs. now: one Big Mac
Pick any year from 2000 to 2026. Tap a bar or drag the slider.
What does a Big Mac cost you?
Almost nobody is paid the federal minimum. In 2025, 844,000 hourly workers, about 1 in 100, earned $7.25 an hour or less. The other 99% earned more, so your minutes are probably fewer than the bars below. Find out how many.
Example numbers are filled in. Type yours; nothing is sent or saved.
In 2000 a Big Mac cost $2.24, or 26 minutes of work at the $5.15 federal minimum wage. In July 2026 it cost $6.22, or 51 minutes at $7.25.
Big Mac: The Economist, Big Mac index, U.S. price (CC BY 4.0), latest reading each year (April 2000 to July 2026). Minimum wage: U.S. Department of Labor, rate in force on the price date. Hourly workers at or below $7.25: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, Table 44, 2025 annual average (844,000 of 81.5 million hourly workers; 11-month average, October not collected during the shutdown). Minutes = price ÷ (hourly pay ÷ 60).
Same burger, twice the work: walk the full path · Try your own hourly pay · A Big Mac around the world
“Your dollar is backed by gold.”
Not since 1971.
Americans lost gold redemption in 1933. Foreign governments lost it on August 15, 1971, when the gold window closed. Read the story of that night.
Tools you can use
Calculators & resources
How to get to a million, your share of the debt, your Big Mac number, bitcoin a little at a time, and more. Plug in your own numbers.
RESOURCES Where the numbers come fromShareable charts and the official sources behind every lesson, from Treasury and CBO data to the U.S. Debt Clock.
FREE TO SHARE PrintablesHomework sheets, one-page explainers and newspaper-style histories for every lesson.