Financial Education Is Having a Moment. Let's Make It Count
More schools are helping children access the financial education they need to make sound decisions and build wealth in adulthood. Here's how families can keep the momentum going.
Financial education is having a moment.
Across the country, policymakers, educators, families and the private sector are paying greater attention to preparing young people to make informed financial decisions.
Thirty-nine states now require personal finance coursework for high school graduation — remarkable progress toward making financial education a fundamental part of growing up.
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At the same time, new initiatives are creating opportunities for young Americans to begin building wealth earlier in life. Trump Accounts, for example, provide a new type of tax-advantaged investment account for children. Eligible children born between 2025 and 2028 can receive a one-time $1,000 federal contribution, creating another opportunity to introduce investing and long-term wealth building at an early age.
This is important momentum. But it also raises a larger question: How do we make sure young people don't simply learn about money, but learn what to do with it?
Sparking a conversation
For many young people, that education may have started this summer with their first experience earning money. Whether through a part-time job or an internship, there is something different about that first paycheck. Suddenly, the money isn't someone else's — it's theirs. They earned it. And now they must decide what to do with it.
Spend it? Save it? Invest some of it? Those are simple questions, but they are the start of financial education.
SIFMA Foundation's Building Financial Futures survey found that while nine in 10 parents believe their children should learn how to invest, only two in 10 feel confident in their own ability to teach the basics.
The good news is that parents don't need to be financial experts to get started. Some of the best financial lessons can begin with ordinary conversations — and a little help from educational resources that make learning about money informative and fun for the whole family.
Opportunities to talk about money habits, saving and investing are everywhere. A trip to the store can become a conversation about wants and needs, choices and trade-offs or simply why things cost what they do.
A favorite sneaker, snack or restaurant can prompt a discussion about the company behind it and what it means to own a piece of a growing business. Parents can ask their children a simple question: If someone gave you $50 today, what would you do with it?
There isn't necessarily a right answer. The value is in sparking a conversation.
These everyday moments can also introduce one of the most powerful principles of investing: Time. Adults sometimes assume children will struggle with investing concepts, but young people already understand patience and delayed gratification. They know that becoming a better athlete, musician or student doesn't happen overnight. You practice, improve and build on that progress.
Parents can reinforce that lesson by recognizing patience, helping lay the foundation for financially savvy decision-making later in life.
Let kids get hands on
Investing can work the same way. Small, consistent actions taken early can have a meaningful impact over time. Giving young people hands-on experience with saving and investing can make concepts such as compound growth, diversification and long-term investing tangible rather than abstract.
That is also part of the opportunity presented by Trump Accounts. These accounts become much more meaningful when young people understand what's happening inside them — what it means to own investments, why markets rise and fall, and how time and compounding can affect wealth over decades.
Just as important is understanding that turning 18 doesn't mean an investment account suddenly becomes spending money. After the growth period ends, Trump Accounts generally become subject to traditional IRA rules, and taking money out early for non-qualifying expenditures can result in penalties and carry tax consequences.
Helping young people understand why money invested for the long term may be more valuable left to grow is itself an important financial lesson.
The goal is to make young people comfortable asking questions, weighing choices and thinking beyond the next purchase. Financial confidence develops through repeated opportunities to make decisions, learn from the results and build knowledge. And while schools have an increasingly important role to play, learning can continue at home.
That is one reason the SIFMA Foundation created Family InvestQuest, a free online experience that gives families a way to explore these ideas together. Parents and children can see how starting early, saving consistently and allowing earnings to compound can help even relatively small amounts grow over time.
Family InvestQuest also features short videos that make financial concepts fun, engaging and easy to understand, giving families another way to learn together without making financial education feel like homework.
Financial education doesn't have to begin and end with a textbook or lesson plan. In fact, some of the most memorable lessons may start with parents asking questions around the kitchen table: Why does diversification matter? Why do markets sometimes decline? Why does starting early matter so much?
Young people don't need to know every answer. Neither do their parents. Learning how to explore those questions together — seeking reliable information, considering different choices and thinking about the long term — is itself an important financial skill.
Making progress
Initiatives such as Economic Education Month give us an opportunity to recognize how far we've come — and how much this work still matters. In 2022, just 12 states required students to take a personal finance course to graduate from high school. Today, 39 do, giving more than 13 million students access to financial education.
At the same time, nearly half of young adults ages 18 to 29 received help from someone outside their household to pay at least one expense last year, according to the 2025 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking — a reminder of the real financial decisions young people face.
Now we need to make the most of that momentum. The next time a young person gets a paycheck, birthday money or an unexpected $50, ask what they plan to do with it. You may hear "new sneakers." That's OK. The important thing is that somewhere along the way, "save some" or "invest some" becomes part of the answer, too.
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