Member Sign In

I grew up in a household where we talked about money.

Not in a formal, sit-down-and-open-your-textbooks kind of way. (Except for that one summer we with the investing competition...) My parents just talked about finances: saving, spending, investing, planning for the future. Money wasn't a mysterious topic reserved for adults, and it certainly wasn't something we pretended didn't exist.

Looking back, I realize how fortunate I was.

By the time I was making financial decisions of my own, I already had a pretty good understanding of how money worked. Not because I'd memorized definitions or aced a personal finance exam, but because I'd spent years listening to my parents talk through real decisions.

That education has served me incredibly well.

So when I saw that Texas, my home state, is now requiring high school students to take a personal finance course, I was thrilled.

Under House Bill 27, passed by the Texas Legislature in 2025, students entering ninth grade in the 2026–2027 school year or later must complete a half-credit personal financial literacy course to graduate. That means teenagers learning about budgeting, credit, taxes and the basics of saving and investing before they ever sign a loan agreement.

Those lessons can change the trajectory of someone's financial life. Frankly, I wish we'd been doing this everywhere decades ago. Texas is part of a growing wave: According to Next Gen Personal Finance, more than half of U.S. high school students will now be guaranteed a personal finance course before they graduate.

But the news got me thinking about something else...

Knowing how money works and actually being good with money are two very different things.

And that's a lesson worth learning whether you're 17 or 57.

We Know What We're Supposed to Do. So Why Don't We Do It?

Try a little experiment.

Imagine I gathered 100 reasonably financially savvy adults in a room and asked a few questions.

Should you contribute to your retirement savings regularly? Of course.

Should you avoid carrying high-interest credit card debt? Absolutely.

Should you have money set aside for unexpected expenses? Well, obviously.

Now, what if I asked how many of them were consistently following all three?

Unfortunately, we probably wouldn't see very many hands.

Most of us don't make poor financial decisions because we don't know any better. Sometimes, sure, someone who doesn't understand how credit card interest compounds might be genuinely shocked by what carrying a balance costs.

But plenty of people understand the math perfectly well and still carry that balance.

They know they should be saving more, but they'll bump up their retirement contributions after the next raise. They know eating out is blowing up their budget, but they're exhausted after work, and ordering dinner sounds so much better than cooking. They know they should review their investments, but there's always something more pressing.

Sound familiar?

The problem isn't necessarily a lack of financial education. It's that being financially responsible often means choosing a future benefit over something that feels good or convenient right now.

And humans aren't particularly good at that.

Your Brain Has Other Plans for Your Money

Behavioral economists have a name for our tendency to favor immediate rewards over future ones: present bias. In plain terms, our brains give more weight to what we can enjoy today than to what we'll gain tomorrow.

Personal finance is practically one giant exercise in fighting it.

Say you could put an extra $500 into your 401(k) this month. You know it'll help down the road. You understand compound growth. But you won't get to enjoy that money for another 20 years.

Or you could use that $500 for a weekend trip, something you've been wanting, or new patio furniture.

One choice delivers satisfaction immediately. The other benefits a future version of yourself you haven't met yet.

It's not exactly a fair fight.

It's also why earning more doesn't automatically mean building more wealth. You get a raise, and suddenly the nicer car seems reasonable. The upgraded vacation feels justified. Little luxuries that once seemed extravagant become ordinary monthly expenses. Five years later, you're earning considerably more without feeling any better off.

You probably already understand lifestyle inflation. That doesn't make you immune to it.

Financial literacy teaches us which decisions make sense. We also need strategies that help us make those decisions consistently.

The Habits That Turn Knowing Into Doing

Here's the encouraging part: You don't need superhuman discipline to manage money well.

In fact, some of the smartest financial moves involve setting things up so you don't have to rely on discipline at all.

Take automatic savings. Say you want to save an extra $750 a month.

You could wait until the end of each month, see what's left in checking and transfer $750 to savings. Maybe that works. But there's a good chance that money finds somewhere else to go before the month is over.

Or you could automatically transfer $375 from each of your twice-monthly paychecks into savings.

Same goal. Same amount of money. But now you're not making a fresh decision 12 times a year about whether you'd rather save or spend. You decided once, and your system handles the rest.

The research backs this up. In a landmark study of one company's 401(k) plan, economists Brigitte Madrian and Dennis Shea found that participation among new hires jumped from 37% to 86% once the company switched to automatic enrollment. Same workers, same plan, same knowledge. The only thing that changed was the default.

That's the beauty of a good system. It turns something you intend to do into something that actually happens. And you can apply it almost everywhere:

- Want to invest more? Increase your retirement contribution by one percentage point today, and check whether your plan lets you schedule automatic increases each year.
- Trying to rein in spending? Set a recurring 15-minute appointment to review your transactions every week. Then add it to your calendar and give it an alarm. It's much easier to catch a habit getting out of hand after seven days than after seven months.
- Working to eliminate credit card debt? Set up an automatic payment above the minimum, at whatever level your budget can support. You can always pay extra when you have spare cash.
- Tired of "surprise" expenses? Create separate savings buckets for predictable but irregular costs like insurance premiums, holiday gifts, car maintenance and vacations.

None of this requires an advanced understanding of economics. It requires a little planning and some upfront effort.

But once it's in place, it keeps working when you're busy, distracted, tired or tempted to do something else with your money.

And trust me, there will be plenty of those days.

What If Nobody Taught You About Money?

There's one more reason I'm happy to see personal finance earn a permanent place in high school classrooms.

Not everyone grew up the way I did.

In some families, money was a private subject. In others, it was a source of stress or conflict. And in plenty of households, parents were figuring things out themselves and didn't have the knowledge to pass along.

If that's your story, you might feel like you entered adulthood at a disadvantage. In some ways, you probably did. Understanding credit before your first loan is far better than learning how it works after racking up thousands of dollars in interest. Starting to invest at 22 gives your money two extra decades to grow than if you start at 42.

But I don't want you walking away from this article worried that if you missed those lessons when you were young, you've missed your chance to become financially successful.

You haven't.

Maybe you're 35 and only now getting serious about retirement savings. Maybe you're 48 and realizing your income has grown substantially over the years but your savings haven't kept pace. Maybe you're 60 and finally asking investing questions you've been too embarrassed to ask for three decades.

You can still learn. Just as importantly, you can still build better habits.

You don't have to master every corner of personal finance before you start. You can learn as you go, making small improvements and building on them.

Will starting later require different choices than starting at 18? Absolutely. But good habits don't stop being valuable just because you didn't form them in high school.

The Most Important Lesson Isn't on the Final Exam

I'm genuinely excited that more young people will leave high school knowing about credit scores, compound interest, borrowing and saving. And I hope those classroom lessons spark more conversations around the dinner table, too.

I know firsthand how valuable it is to grow up in a home where talking about money feels normal. It's something I want to do for my own boys, just as my parents did for me.

But I also hope we're teaching kids something beyond definitions and calculations.

That managing money well is a skill you develop, not a talent you're born with or without.

That making a good financial decision once is important, but making it a habit is even better.

And that even people who know an awful lot about personal finance sometimes struggle to follow their own advice.

So whether you're helping a teenager understand their first paycheck or trying to get your own financial house in order, here's my challenge:

Pick one thing you already know you should be doing with your money, and make it easier to actually do.

Automate a contribution. Schedule a weekly money check-in. Bump up your debt payment. Open a dedicated savings account.

It doesn't have to be complicated or ambitious. It just has to be something you'll stick with.

Because knowing how money works is a wonderful place to start.

But what you do with that knowledge is what changes your financial life.