As part of an extracurricular program offered at his high school, Frederick was provided $200 to invest in the market in February 2021. In just 21 months, he
Just 21 states require students to take personal finance coursework to graduate high school, with only a handful mandating stand-alone classes, according to the Council for Economic Education.
Yet the access to that education remains unequal and the impact is clear. In 2019, the median wealth of Black households in the U.S. was $24,100, compared with $189,100 for white households.
As for the programs, less than 12% of students are required to take a stand-alone personal finance course to graduate high school, outside of the six states mandate it, research by Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit focused on providing financial education to middle and high school students, found.
As a country, we ve seen millions of Americans, with a general lack of financial planning, struggle every day with their money, only to wind up deep in debt.
Various industry research found that 2 on 3 families lack any type of emergency savings; 78% of adults live paycheck to paycheck, and 3 in 5 adults do not maintain a monthly budget.
Additionally, on average, U.S. adults correctly answered only 50% of the questions on the TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index in 2021.
That s why it is so crucial to start teaching kids personal finance in high school, financial literacy advocates say.
However, what many researchers have found is that far too few students particularly those from low-income backgrounds receive any personal finance education during high school. Yet they are expected to make big financial decisions about student loans and budgeting for living expenses after graduation.