Workshop Modules for Educators and Librarians

Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: 5 session-ready workshop modules for library programmes, senior centres, extension offices and adult-education instructors. Each one gives you a facilitator outline, a participant handout that prints clean, and the pages every talking point is drawn from. Free to use and adapt with attribution. No registration, no form, no email wall — take what you need. Nothing in this kit asserts anything our published pages do not already say, with their own sources attached, so you can check any claim before you teach it.

How to run these

• Every talking point links to the page it comes from. Read that page before the session — it carries the sources, the caveats and the honest gaps that a talking point cannot.
• The handout is a live page, not a PDF. Open it, press Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on a Mac), and it prints as a clean guide with the licence and the web address on it. All eleven printable guides are here.
• Check the figures before you print a stack. Anything with a number in it is tracked in our public register, which records what makes each figure move. Most of them change between October and January.
• Timings are a guide. Every module below runs comfortably in an hour except the last, which needs longer because the room always has questions.

Protecting Yourself from Scams · 60 minutes

What participants leave with. Participants leave with one test they can apply on the phone, in the moment, rather than a list of scam names they will not remember.

Facilitator outline — each point links to the page it is drawn from:

1. Open with the five features every scam shares, not with examples — examples date, features do not. Is It a Scam? The Five-Feature Checklist
2. The grandparent scam, as the worked example. The instruction is one sentence long: hang up and call back on a number you already had. The Grandparent Scam
3. Impostors who use real credentials. This is the one that catches financially confident people, which is why it belongs in a room of them. The Advisor Imposter Scam
4. Romance and crypto-investment scams — run this without any moralising about the victim; shame is the mechanism the scam depends on. Romance and Crypto Scams
5. Close on what to do afterwards, in order. Anyone in the room who has already been scammed needs this more than the prevention half. What to Do If You Have Been Scammed

Participant handout: the five-feature checklist — open it and print it. Licence: Free to print, copy and share for any purpose, including commercially, with attribution — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). No permission needed and no need to tell us.

The Documents Everyone Needs · 60 minutes

What participants leave with. Participants leave knowing which four documents they are missing and what each one actually does — not which lawyer to call.

Facilitator outline — each point links to the page it is drawn from:

1. Start from the checklist rather than the vocabulary. People know they are behind; they do not know on what. The Estate Planning Checklist
2. The beneficiary form beats the will. This is the single highest-value fact in the session and it surprises almost every room. Beneficiary Designation vs Will
3. A power of attorney is a state-law document and banks refuse them. Cover the refusal, because it is the failure participants will actually meet. When a Bank Refuses a POA
4. Advance directives, and why the requirements differ by state. Advance Directive Requirements by State
5. Cost, honestly, so nobody leaves thinking this is unaffordable or that it is free. How Much Does a Will Cost?

Participant handout: the estate planning checklist — open it and print it. Licence: Free to print, copy and share for any purpose, including commercially, with attribution — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). No permission needed and no need to tell us.

Glossary extract — the terms this module uses, each with its own anchor so you can print or quote a single definition: beneficiary designation · advance directive · revocable trust · administrator. The full glossary runs to 39 terms.

Understanding Your Social Security · 60 minutes

What participants leave with. Participants leave understanding that the claiming decision is about longevity and a surviving spouse, not about beating the system.

Facilitator outline — each point links to the page it is drawn from:

1. Frame the whole session as one trade: a smaller cheque for longer, or a larger cheque for less long. Social Security Timing
2. Run the calculator live on one volunteer’s numbers. It lands harder than any slide. The Claiming Age Calculator
3. The married-couple version, because the higher earner’s decision is really a decision about the survivor. Married Couple Claiming Calculator
4. Working while claiming: benefits withheld under the earnings test are not lost. People turn down work over this misunderstanding. The Earnings Test: Money Is Not Lost
5. Shorter life expectancy changes the answer, and saying so plainly is more respectful than avoiding it. Claiming With a Shorter Life Expectancy

Participant handout: the timing guide — open it and print it. Licence: Free to print, copy and share for any purpose, including commercially, with attribution — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). No permission needed and no need to tell us.

Medicare Without the Confusion · 60 minutes

What participants leave with. Participants leave able to say what their enrolment deadline is and what a late one costs — the two things that are expensive to get wrong.

Facilitator outline — each point links to the page it is drawn from:

1. Start with the enrolment window, because it is the only part with a penalty attached. The Enrolment Window Calculator
2. What the Part B late penalty actually costs, computed rather than described. Part B Penalty Calculator
3. Medigap versus Advantage as a decision, not a sales comparison. Medigap vs Medicare Advantage
4. The underwriting window is the fact that closes doors quietly — cover it before anyone chooses. The Medigap Underwriting Window
5. Close on open enrolment: what actually changes each year and what does not. Medicare Open Enrolment

Participant handout: the open-enrolment checklist — open it and print it. Licence: Free to print, copy and share for any purpose, including commercially, with attribution — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). No permission needed and no need to tell us.

Managing a Parent’s Money · 75 minutes

What participants leave with. For the adult children in the room. Participants leave with the order of operations and with the conversation they have been avoiding.

Facilitator outline — each point links to the page it is drawn from:

1. Begin with authority, not with money: what a power of attorney does and where it fails. When a Bank Refuses a POA
2. Paying a family member to provide care — the agreement, and why an informal arrangement causes problems later. Family Caregiver Agreements
3. The tax side, which almost every family gets wrong: the carer is usually a household employee, not a contractor. Paying a Family Caregiver: Taxes
4. What happens on the day, so the room is not learning it in a hospital corridor. When Someone Dies: The Financial Checklist
5. If the parent receives SSI, an inheritance or a gift can end eligibility. This must be said before anyone reorganises a parent’s money. SSI and Inheritance

Participant handout: the caregiver agreement guide — open it and print it. Licence: Free to print, copy and share for any purpose, including commercially, with attribution — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). No permission needed and no need to tell us.

The licence, and the no-registration rule

Free to print, copy and share for any purpose, including commercially, with attribution — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). No permission needed and no need to tell us.

Adapt the outlines for your own community, translate them, put them in a training pack, or charge for the programme they sit inside. The only requirement is attribution, and on the printed handouts it is already on the paper.

There is no gate on any of this and there will not be one. An instructor planning a Thursday session should not have to request materials and wait. The institutional front door explains the rest of the reasoning, including why we do not track who uses these.

What this kit will not do

It teaches only from our published pages. Every talking point above is a pointer to a page that carries its own primary sources — statutes, IRS material, agency guidance — and where a page states an honest gap, the module inherits that gap rather than papering over it. Where we wanted a talking point that no page of ours supports, we left it out. A workshop outline is exactly the format in which an unsupported claim travels furthest, because the facilitator says it out loud with authority.

None of these pages carries an advertisement or a referral, and the modules do not route participants to a product. If a session raises a question none of our pages answers, the honest close is to say so and point at the official source — not at us.

Corrections are welcome and get published: [email protected], corrections.