#1666: Financial literacy is a good investment for American students

Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit cofounded by Tim Ranzetta and Jessica Endlich, aims to help enlighten students around financial literacy — everything from budgeting to investing.

Currently, about 8 states have guaranteed at least some sort of financial literacy classes in their public school curriculum. But Ranzetta sees an opportunity to expand that further, a goal he said Next Gen can help fully realize with the curriculum it’s developed.

Additional reading Ranzetta and his organization see the proliferation of personal finance classes in schools on the horizon. And in an April interview with CNBC, the organization’s cofounder said, “When you start seeing Ohio and Florida as states that’ve already crossed the finish line, it’s shown other large states that this is possible.”

He’s also realized that “attitudes to money are shaped by your unique experiences.” And to create curriculum that addresses those individual issues, Next Gen Personal Finance takes into account the vast array of experiences that make up the public school population.

Twenty-six percent of Americans in a 2018 survey answered a question correctly regarding the correlation of interest rates and bond prices. That points toward, Ranzetta said, a financial literacy problem in the U.S.

He’s also got opinions on Gamestop, Robinhood and meme stocks.

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