The tide is finally turning on personal finance education.
Over half of all states now mandate courses on the subject to graduate from high school, there are long waitlists to get into personal finance college courses, and (some) social media influencers are spreading dependable financial advice.
It’s unlike anything Jean Chatzky has ever seen. And she would know—she’s written best-selling personal finance books, made countless media appearances, and founded HerMoney, a platform dedicated to providing personal finance advice to women.
“For such a long time, the needle was stuck,” Chatzky tells Fortune. Now, she says, personal finance is a topic less Americans are afraid to discuss. The generation that’s growing up now—the last of Gen Z and the beginning of Gen Alpha—understands money in ways that previous generations didn’t, and it has to do with their money story.
“‘They understand that knowing about money is really important. They understand it because, very much like kids in the depression, they saw their parents struggle through the financial crisis and then again through the pandemic,” she adds.
A much higher share of Gen Zers say they are confident about being on track for retirement, thanks in part to having started saving for retirement on average 15 years earlier than baby boomers. However, there’s still progress to be made, Chatzky says.
Wealth disappears when people lack personal finance skills
A lack of personal finance education can lead to stress and lost opportunities—and the lesson applies to the wealthy as much as to those who struggle financially. Without personal finance skills, families risk losing the hard-earned wealth accumulated by their ancestors. Some estimates say 70% of wealthy families will lose their wealth by the second generation. Almost all families—90%—lose it by the third generation.
“With wealth comes responsibility,” Chatzky says.
Like in school, families need to provide their children and grandchildren with consistent lessons on personal finance education, Chatzky explains. That could be as simple as putting savings in a glass jar and explaining its importance. “Just-in-time” financial education can be important, too, since children may retain financial knowledge better when they learn it right before it becomes relevant.
“Give kids a half-an-hour lesson on credit cards before they get a credit card; teach them the basics right before they get it,” says Chatzky.
That also means adults need to set a good example and stay on top of their financial literacy so that when a new topic emerges, like cryptocurrency, they can not only understand how to best apply it to their own financial situation but also explain the benefits and risks to their children.
Over 70% of children turn to their parents as the most trusted source for money advice, according to T. Rowe Price, and while they increasingly turn to social media with age, Chatzky likes to tell her clients that foundational models are crucial: “Givers are not born.”
“Whatever legacy you want your kids to carry on, whatever financial behaviors you think are important for your children to carry on to their children, that's on you,” she adds.
The value of personal finance education
Chatzky is encouraged by the rising interest in individuals, especially young adults, figuring out how to best manage their money. She points to the fact that when she was in school, personal finance was often taught in home economics courses, largely to all students. However, as schools elected to fill students’ schedules with Advanced Placement (AP) courses, electives, and testing, financial education was placed on the back burner.
In recent years, states have realized that personal finance should be an important life skill, especially considering some of the concerning financial habits of Americans. For example, 1 in 4 adults have no emergency savings, according to Bankrate, and student loan debt countrywide is over $2 trillion.
“The financial crisis hit and we went through the pandemic, and I think that there was a dawning realization on the part of high schools and now colleges and kids and their parents that [personal finance] is a life skill that is absolutely necessary,” says Chatzky.
And while standalone personal finance courses are a positive development, Chatzky believes the foundations should be taught throughout school.
“There's a reason that we get the very basics of biology like elementary school science and then we get it again in middle school, and then we get it again in high school, and it's, it's just building on these very basic concepts that, unless you hear them repeated close to when you actually need to use them, you're just going to forget,” she says.
When it comes to personal finance college courses, some professors previously told Fortune they do not believe classes should be mandatory to graduate college since students should be “motivated” to do them instead. Chatzky suggests that if not a required course, it should easily be implemented as a smaller module during first-year orientation and then again right before graduation, so that students are learning topics that they soon will have to face, like budgeting and setting up a 401k.
Absent being taught personal finance in school or at home, many individuals turn to social media for help. Millions of users, for example, receive advice every day on platforms like Reddit, TikTok, and LinkedIn. While Chatzky—who has over 250,000 followers on LinkedIn—agrees it can be resourceful, people should be discerning about who they listen to.
“If it sounds like it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true,” she says.
Overall, she suggests five broad pieces of advice for individuals looking to jumpstart their financial situation:
- Earn a decent living
- Spend less than you make
- Save and invest what you’re not spending
- Protect your financial life
- Give back
“If you're not investing, start investing and figure the rest out as you go,” Chatzky says.
