The State of Financial Literacy in America

I am deeply passionate about finding solutions to teaching our children important money skills and habits before they leave home to go off to discover their role in the world. How wonderful it would be if all kids could grow up to be money savvy adults!

We live in a world today in which each of us has the responsibility to learn about and actively manage our financial lives. While the importance of financial literacy as a basic life skill is obvious to many parents, educators and policymakers, how to develop the skills in our children remains a challenge.

In a nation where nearly a third of high school seniors already use a credit card, a higher proportion have an ATM card, and over a million families filed for personal bankruptcy last year, the need for personal financial literacy is apparent. Yet fewer than 30 percent of young Americans are given the opportunity to take as much as one week’s worth of coursework in money management or personal finance in high school--from the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy 2002 Survey of High School Seniors.

Schools, who struggle with insufficient resources to deal with the large set of societal requirements--like No Child Left Behind, aren’t able to add money skills development to their curriculum.

Parents, who struggle with managing their own debt and planning for their retirement just want their kids to be armed with a level of financial literacy they did/do not have themselves.

And to make matters more complicated (as if they weren't already) parents also have a hard job in walking a fine line in teaching kids about money between overprotecting them from the realities of money and setting their kids up for a life long preoccupation with money as a source of power and well being.

So what can we do about it??