Financial Basics Foundation

The Financial Basics Foundation (FBF) is an independent charity dedicated to ensuring that all young Australians leaving the secondary education system have the knowledge to make informed decisions about their financial affairs, including an understanding of the credit system and sound financial management practices.

FBF works with educators, students, finance professionals and e-learning experts from around Australia to develop, produce and distribute financial literacy teaching resources free of charge to Australian secondary schools and charities. 

Launched in February 2002, the Financial Basics Foundation was created (and initially funded) by Collection House Limited.

In the last decade, FBF has become one of Australia's leading not-for-profit organisations producing financial literacy initiatives for young people. To date, FBF has a membership of 3,542 teachers from 1,741 secondary schools across Australia. 

Our flagship resource, Operation Financial Literacy (OFL), is a twelve-module teaching manual that includes teacher notes and student activity sheets. OFL was written by Australian teachers for Australian teachers and is mapped to the Australian Curriculum. 

Our second initiative, ESSI Money (standing for Earning, Saving, Spending and Investing) is an online game that teaches the fundamentals of money management in an engaging and fun way. ESSI Money is an e-learning game that simulates a six-month period over which players make a series of financial decisions and transactions. It challenges and engages young people in a creative and stimulating way, and presents ‘boring’ information in a context that they can understand and apply to their own lives.