Florida’s financial literacy classes are a smart investment

Every public high schooler in Florida receives basic money management training, cemented into state law in 2022. Our state lawmakers have larded up school curricula in dubious ways in recent years. This is not one of them.

Florida’s program gets kids off to a good start on life’s inescapable financial journey. They study spending and saving, bank accounts and balancing checkbooks. They calculate federal income taxes and assess insurance policies. They soak up the power of compound interest and the perils of too much debt.

They learn that financial ignorance is expensive — but also avoidable.

Too bad the program wasn’t mandatory nationwide decades ago, before evidence of our fiscal infirmities piled up like so many bad checks.

Just days ago, news broke that the national debt had topped $39 trillion — $39,000,000,000,000. The last time Congress balanced the budget, AOL’s “You’ve got mail” was an earworm, and Tom Hanks was stranded on a deserted island with what would become the world’s most famous volleyball. Congress has set a terrible example ever since. “Buy now and pay later — or never” is a damaging message for young people, who find out too late that they cannot get away with wayward finances as easily as a sovereign nation.

At the individual level, about half of U.S. adults live paycheck to paycheck. Nearly 3 in 10 have more credit card debt than emergency savings, according to Bankrate, a consumer financial services company. And a large swath of the country still lacks sufficient cash to cover an unexpected $1,000 expense.

Almost 30% have nothing saved for retirement. Those who have saved are mostly short of their own stated goals — and well behind where most financial planners would want them to be.

Even positive retirement numbers can be misleading. One recent study found that people in their 50s had an average of $629,000 in their main retirement account. That’s a healthy sum. It’s also a classic example of the tyranny of averages (which should be part of any financial literacy curriculum). In this case, the average is heavily influenced by a small group of aggressive savers with multi-million dollar accounts. The median amount was just $246,000, meaning half of the retirement accounts had more and half had less. That’s woefully short of the $1.4 million that respondents to another recent survey said they would need for a comfortable retirement.

Let’s stop here to emphasize that being born into money doesn’t make someone a financial genius. It makes them lucky. They won the parent lottery. They got to start life’s financial marathon with more resources. That’s not a dig. It’s just a fact. It’s much easier to fall behind financially if you start with nothing in your bank account. Financial literacy can help close the gap between kids with money-savvy parents who model good financial behavior and those who don’t.

Bad luck, poor timing, low wages, high inflation, expensive housing and too few good jobs all contribute to financial distress — and no classroom curriculum fixes all of that. For that reason, some financial experts question the impact of financial literacy education: Structural disadvantages, they argue, are a heavier anchor than ignorance. Education alone won’t close the wealth gap, but studies suggest it helps. People with even basic financial management education save more, avoid unnecessary debt, and are generally more positive about their financial future, traits associated with lower overall anxiety. Education provides an edge, and for someone starting with nothing, that edge matters.

The financially literate are also far more likely to write out a plan, either on their own or with a financial professional. Fidelity’s 2026 State of Retirement Planning survey found that people with a written plan were more than twice as likely to feel good about the prospects of reaching their financial goals as those without. That’s a lot of extra mojo for just writing down a path to success.

The good news is that there’s some evidence that younger generations are more likely to think they are financially comfortable or on track to get there, according to Charles Schwab’s annual Modern Wealth Survey. That might be the (over)confidence of youth, but that same study showed that the younger generation is more likely to have “documented their financial goals in a formal plan.” There’s the writing-it-down part again.

The theme is easy to spot: Education leads to financial literacy, which leads to better planning, which leads to more wealth — and more restful nights.

Financial literacy won’t entirely level a tilted playing field. But for the kid who didn’t grow up watching parents invest, negotiate or save, it might be the only map they get.