How Finance Works
Cut through accounting jargon to understand how money actually moves through businesses and investments. Learn to read financial health, evaluate future value, and make smart capital decisions.
Like Duolingo, but for How Finance Works. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Reading Financial Reality and Valuation and Capital Decisions. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Finance Works
- Cash balance represents actual, usable funds currently sitting in the account
- Paper profit records income the moment a deal is struck, not when cash lands
- Expenses and earnings on paper often rely on accounting estimates and timing rules
- Landlords, vendors, and employees demand immediate cash regardless of promised future revenue
- Selling a service on credit creates accounts receivable, which cannot pay immediate bills
- Insolvency happens when a business runs out of cash to meet obligations today, even with millions in unpaid invoices owed to it
- Operating cash flow isolates actual cash entering and leaving from core daily work
- A healthy core business fuels itself without tapping external loans or personal savings
- Outside loans mask an unprofitable daily operation by artificially pumping cash into the balance
- Burn rate is the net amount of cash drained each month
- Runway is total cash divided by monthly burn rate
- Raw fabric and manufacturing inventory must be paid for weeks or months before the customer pays
- Hiring extra warehouse staff increases immediate weekly payroll long before retail profits clear
- Growth absorbs front-loaded cash while customer cash collections lag behind
- Runway acts as a hard operational deadline to either break even or find fresh capital
- A balance sheet captures a single freeze-frame moment showing assets and liabilities
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Finance Works the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
Imagine you shake hands on a $10,000 project today, but the client pays in two months. When does paper profit record that income?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where How Finance Works takes you
- 1
Reading Financial Reality
- Cash Flow and Paper Profit
- Decoding the Core Financial Statements
- 2
Valuation and Capital Decisions
- The Time Value of Money and Valuation
- Risk, Return, and Capital Allocation
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
How Finance Works is taught in the The Storyteller style: every lesson is a story. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
More Business on Tomo
Independent Film Investing
Learn how to evaluate scripts, protect your capital with tax credits, and navigate the 'waterfall' of movie profits. This course turns the mystery of cinema finance into a calculated business strategy for the aspiring executive producer.
How a Business Actually Works
Strip away the jargon and discover the core engine of every successful company. Learn how to spot real problems, create value people will pay for, and manage the simple math that keeps a business alive.
Building Profitable Businesses
Move beyond basic accounting to master the strategic levers of profitability, cash flow management, and scalable growth. Learn to build a business that generates real wealth through disciplined financial engineering and market positioning.
How Businesses Actually Run
Demystify the mechanics behind successful organizations. Learn how money moves, how teams coordinate, and how leaders make sound operational choices every day.
Applied Equity Valuation and Financial Modeling
Bridge the gap between accounting mechanics and institutional-grade equity research. Learn to build resilient DCF models, expose hidden cash flow distortions, and uncover mispriced securities through rigorous valuation engineering.
How the Economy Really Works
Decode the hidden forces shaping your daily purchases, paychecks, and the headlines. Learn to spot trade-offs, understand price shifts, and make sense of interest rates and inflation.
Start How Finance Works today.
Download Tomo, search How Finance Works, and play your first lesson in under a minute.