The foundation

Built by someone
who's still
figuring it out.

Isaac V. Katsman
Isaac V. Katsman
Founder

Why I built this.

I like economics. I like that it's really just math pointed at the way people actually behave, and math has always been my favorite subject, because it's the one place where the answer doesn't care how you feel about it. Somewhere in the middle of learning how interest and incentives work, I noticed something that bothered me: none of this was ever going to reach the people who need it most, and that wasn't an accident.

Nobody is telling the youth this stuff. What people are doing is selling us things. Credit card offers show up before anyone explains what an APR is. Buy now, pay later is one tap away at checkout. Doomspending gets packaged as self-care and sold back to us as a personality. There's an entire industry built on us not knowing the math, and there's almost nothing built on the other side of that. So I started building it.

I want to be honest about what this is. I'm a student, not a certified financial advisor, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. What I can do is read the fine print, do the math, and write it down in plain language before someone my age signs something they don't understand. When I get something wrong, I'll fix it. When I don't know, I'll say so. And when I'm not doing this, I'm probably on a golf course, which has taught me more about patience and compounding small improvements than I expected it to.

The goal isn't perfection. It's just better than nothing, which is what most of us got.

The mission

One generation that knows the rules before the game starts.

Most of us entered adulthood without ever learning how money actually works. Nobody explains how credit scores are calculated, how interest compounds, what a 401k match means. That's not an accident and it's not our fault. But it is our problem to solve.

Debt Free Generation exists to change that, one guide, one story, one conversation at a time. It starts small. It's built by someone who's still learning. But it's honest, and it's real, and right now that's enough.

What we stand for.

01
Plain language, always

If you need a finance degree to understand the explanation, the explanation is wrong. Everything here is written to be understood.

02
No sponsored garbage

Every tool and resource recommended here is something we'd actually use. No affiliate links, no paid placements.

03
Peer-written, expert-checked

This isn't a bank or a financial advisor. It's someone a few steps ahead passing back what they learned, with an advisory board reviewing the details to make sure what's here actually holds up.

04
Honest about being a work in progress

This site will grow. Some content will change. We'll say when we don't know something. That transparency is intentional.

Bring it to your school.

We're building a national network of students teaching students. Starting a chapter on your campus takes five steps.

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