3 Things the U.S. Should Do Now to Improve Financial Literacy

According to the S&P Global FinLit Survey, which assesses financial literacy around the world, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are at the top of the leaderboard at 71 percent while the United States scored 57 percent. To put this in perspective, on this measure the United States is closer to Botswana than other developed countries such as Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

In summary, the problem is significant, but the solution is simple. We need to mimic the following three practices of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway:

1. Schooling: Establish a robust and consistent personal finance curriculum from elementary through high school. As of the time of this writing, only 25 states require a personal finance course to be completed in high school, which is also far too late based on a recent study showing that money habits are mostly formed by age 7. Personally speaking, my two kids, 12 and 10, have learned more about shapes than money in school, and I’m pretty sure they won’t need to know what a parallelogram is to be financially successful.
2. Adult Education: Create high-quality adult education that’s available regardless of income or assets. This runs counter to the traditional financial planning industry, which generally works exclusively with those who already have a certain level of wealth, something that I’m trying to change with my company, Walk You to Wealth.
3. Fiscal Responsibility: Promote financial responsibility instead of limitless spending and debt. According to data from the International Monetary Fund, our federal debt in the United States was 110 percent of gross domestic product in 2022, while Sweden, Denmark, and Norway were 37 percent, 23 percent, and 13 percent, respectively. We are promoting a culture of debt at a federal level which trickles down to our citizens, who are in more than $1 trillion of credit card debt.

These three surprisingly simple solutions require consensus and consistency, something that we aren’t typically great at in this country, especially when it comes to public education across all 50 states. It also requires a smidge of humility to admit that we aren’t the best at something. 

That being said, we have a model that we can mimic and even improve upon. Think about the strides we can make from a financial literacy perspective if we adopt and enhance these three practices.