How do we bolster the future strength of our nation’s economy? We start by teaching our children how to manage money. Without the fundamental financial skills, we are setting them up for failure, and that’s a failure that will ripple through our country’s political and economic fabric.
According to a Consumer Affairs1 study in 2024-2025, 60% of students surveyed lacked confidence in their financial management skills. They had not been taught how to create a budget, manage their credit, or balance a checkbook (“What’s a checkbook?” - Gen Z)
Most of our schools have no financial literacy curriculum. An overwhelming number of young adults report that high school did not make them feel fully prepared to handle money in the real world. A proportionally low number of Gen Z young adults report taking a personal finance course at any point in their first twenty years of life.
Yet, our students are eager to learn. Budgeting, investing, avoiding debt, and building credit are common goals among today’s young adults. They value independence, personal freedom, transparency, and autonomy, all of which intersect with financial literacy. Those of us farther along on the timeline of life know that the financial habits we build in our twenties impact our lives for several decades, if not the rest of our lives.
Old Glory Bank has prepared a series of informational resources for students to build financial literacy in high school and college. Our audience may be the students, but we invite you as parents and grandparents to come along with us and use these resources as well. They can become conversation topics or homeschool assignments, or even classroom resources. There’s nothing like a budget lesson over dinner, right?