Why Our First-Gen, Low-Income High School Students NEED Financial Literacy

As a former high school educator that dedicated most of my life to serving first-gen, low-income students, I now see that financial literacy in the school system is an absolute MUST. 

As a first-generation student myself, I am a firm believer that education has the power to break the cycle of poverty. However, in order to break generational cycles of poverty, we must look at students holistically and provide the type of education that will transform their lives. This includes curricula like personal finance. Personal finance is pivotal to first-gen students that come from low-income communities. Not only is the information critical, but it’s also imperative students receive the material from a lens that acknowledges traumas they may have faced, and barriers that still exist today. 

Many first-gen low-income students like myself have a complex relationship with money because of the economic hardships we’ve faced. The only way to work through some of the complexities is to have a better understanding of money and normalize conversations about money. 

Money and finances impact our daily lives, so why isn’t it embedded into the curriculum? I’m still baffled when I think about my own educational journey. I received my undergraduate and graduate degrees without ever being offered a personal finance class–not even a workshop. I learned about credit from friends and learned about investing later in life from one of my coworkers. The first retirement information I came across was part of a confusing and intimidating employee onboarding packet.  We need to change this for our students. Our future generations deserve better. 

Our students need an intentional financial curriculum embedded into their core high school programming. By embedding personal finance at an earlier age, we can create opportunities to change a lot of the financial trauma many have endured, and therefore change the financial trajectory of many generations to come. 

Here’s how embedding a financial curriculum will change things for our first-gen communities and future generations: 

1. Develop a generation of self-aware citizens that will focus on intentional spending, therefore creating financial stability which translates to better spending habits, less stress, less debt, and improved mental and physical health. We want to develop students’ self-awareness so they can practice intentional spending and align their financial behavior with what they value and truly enjoy. Additionally, more intentional spending leads to less debt which may lead to improved mental and physical health in the long term. 

2. Students will be able to make informed decisions about their higher education options which potentially means less student debt and the ability to begin their wealth-building journey early. The more prepared students are about leveraging debt, the better decisions they will make, which in turn allows them opportunities to invest in assets like real estate or even the stock market. 

3. Students will gain the ability to build wealth at a younger age due to confidence in their money management skills. By empowering students with money management skills, they have the ability to save, spend, and earn differently than if they did not have that knowledge. This allows greater opportunities to build long-term wealth that can positively impact their families and communities at large. 

4. Lastly, providing financial literacy to first-gen students not only changes the life of that one student but of their family and communities as well. As a first-gen student myself, my educational and financial decisions have positively impacted my family. I have been able to help them financially, and guide them to make better decisions because of what I know. I am hopeful that providing first-gen students with the empowerment to manage their money and build wealth, will create a domino effect that will have lasting effects for generations to come, and will break cycles of poverty that have adversely affected our communities for too long. 

Let’s get to work my fellow educators, and advocate for financial literacy in our educational programming!