Why Personal Finance Education Matters Now More Than Ever

Personal finance is about more than just money—it’s about freedom, clarity, and the confidence to make wise life decisions. Yet today, those decisions are becoming increasingly complex. Despite unprecedented access to financial tools and resources—and despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on financial literacy programs (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2013)—Americans are becoming less financially literate. Over the course of more than a decade of tracking, the FINRA Foundation has found that financial acuity remains low, and average literacy scores have continued to decline (Valdes, Mottola, Lin, & Bumcrot, 2024).

This decline in financial literacy has real consequences.

According to the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, nearly half of American households—46%—report having no retirement savings at all (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2023). That means millions of families are heading into the future without a financial cushion, despite decades of public and private education efforts.

This persistent decline points to a troubling disconnect: massive investment in education is not translating into meaningful results.

So what’s going wrong?

As Huston (2010) explains, financial literacy isn’t just about knowing information; it’s also about being able to apply that knowledge in real life. And according to recent work by Xiao, Huang, Goyal, and Kumar (2022), financial capability requires more than just knowledge. It depends on three components: knowledge, behavior, and opportunity. This KBO framework defines financial capability as “an individual’s ability to apply appropriate financial knowledge, perform desirable financial behaviors, and take available financial opportunities for achieving financial wellbeing” (Xiao et al., 2022, p. 1681).

In other words, people must understand money, act wisely with it, and have access to the tools and systems that allow them to thrive.

That’s where we come in.

A new take on KBO

Our mission is to help individuals not just know more, but do better with the financial resources they’ve been given. We focus on KBO, in hopes of helping students, individuals, and families Know more, Behave well, and have access to Opportunities (tools and safe institutions).

Financial capability is no longer optional. It’s essential. We’re here to ensure that our young adults, regardless of age, income, or background, have the knowledge, behavior, and opportunities to build lasting financial well-being.

References

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (2023). 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances chartbook.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (2013). Navigating the market: A comparison of spending on financial education and financial marketing. Washington, DC: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Huston, S. J. (2010). Measuring financial literacy. The Journal of Consumer Affairs, 44(2), 296–316.

Valdes, O. M., Mottola, G. R., Lin, J. T., & Bumcrot, C. (2024). The FINRA Foundation’s National Financial Capability Study: Unpacking 12 years of data on US financial capability. Journal of Financial Literacy and Wellbeing, 2(1), 79-90.

Xiao, J. J., Huang, J., Goyal, K., & Kumar, S. (2022). Financial capability: A systematic conceptual review, extension and synthesis. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 40(7), 1680–1717.