In 1998, I graduated from high school without any idea how to manage money.
No one had taught me how credit worked. I didn’t understand interest rates or what compound interest could do to a balance I let sit. I had no concept of budgeting, no framework for distinguishing between what I needed and what I wanted. I walked into adulthood financially blind—and I didn’t even know it.
I figured it out eventually. The hard way. Through mistakes, stress, and years of learning what I should have known before I signed my first lease or accepted my first credit card offer.
In 2025, my son Matthew graduated from high school. Different era. Different world. Same gap.
He attended an A-rated school district. Not underfunded. Not struggling. The kind of district families move to because of its reputation. By every standard measure, he received an excellent education.
And yet, when Matthew walked across that stage, he had never taken a personal finance course.
It wasn’t that the school didn’t offer one. There was an elective on the books. But no one told him it mattered. No counselor flagged it. No requirement forced the issue. So he filled his schedule with other things—courses that counted toward graduation, courses that looked good for college, courses that fit the path everyone said he should follow.
Personal finance wasn’t on that path.
Here’s the part that gets me: the year after Matthew graduated, the district added a personal finance requirement. A half-credit course, spread across four years. Progress, I suppose. But too late for him, and barely a starting point for the students who follow.
The world changed completely between 1998 and 2025. The internet rewired commerce. Smartphones put banking in everyone’s pocket. Credit products multiplied. Student debt exploded. The financial decisions facing an 18-year-old today are more complex, more consequential, and come faster than anything I faced at that age.
And the curriculum? Essentially unchanged.
Matthew graduated into a more complicated financial world than I did—with the same lack of preparation I had a generation earlier.
Now, Matthew is better off than I was. Not because the system improved, but because I made sure he wouldn’t repeat my mistakes.
We talked openly about money. He saw my wife Trisha and I model good spending habits, differentiating between a need and a want. I explained how credit cards actually work, why starting to invest early matters, what a 401(k) is and why he should care about it the moment he’s offered one.
I filled the gap myself. Because I knew it was there.
But I’m a CPA. I spent 20 years learning these lessons—some in school, most through trial and error. I had something to pass down.
What about the millions of kids whose parents weren’t taught either?
That’s the question that haunts me.
The system still assumes parents will handle this. “Ask your mom and dad” is the unspoken answer to every financial question school doesn’t address. But what happens when mom and dad don’t know? What happens when money is a source of stress in the household, not a topic of conversation? What happens when parents are working two jobs and don’t have time to sit down and explain compound interest?
Those kids graduate just as unprepared as I was in 1998. Just as unprepared as Matthew would have been if I hadn’t intervened.
That’s not education. That’s luck. And luck isn’t a system. It’s a lottery—one that determines who enters adulthood with a foundation and who enters it with a disadvantage that can take years to overcome.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why. Why, in 26 years, hasn’t this changed? How did we send rovers to Mars, put supercomputers in every pocket, and rewire the entire global economy—but still graduate kids who don’t know how a credit card works?
I don’t have a complete answer yet. But I know it’s not because the problem is invisible. Parents see it. Teachers see it. Employers see it. The data has been clear for decades.
Something in the system isn’t responding. And that’s worth investigating.
I broke the cycle at home. I’m proud of that. Matthew will make better decisions than I did at his age because we had conversations the school never required.
But I shouldn’t have had to be the backup plan. The system shouldn’t require a CPA dad to prepare a kid for financial life.
Twenty-six years. An A-rated district. A completely transformed economy.
And still, we’re sending kids out the door without the most basic tools for the financial lives they’re about to live.
That’s not a gap. It’s a failure—one we’ve chosen, year after year, not to fix.