Here’s something I didn’t know until recently: the federal government actually has an official body dedicated to improving financial literacy in America. It’s called the Financial Literacy and Education Commission, or FLEC. It was established by Congress in 2003. It’s chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury. The Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau serves as Vice Chair. And it includes representatives from 23 federal agencies, plus the White House Domestic Policy Council.
Twenty-three agencies. The Treasury Secretary. An act of Congress.
Sounds like the government is taking this seriously, right?
Here’s the catch: FLEC has no budget. No dedicated staff. And no authority to mandate anything.
It can coordinate. It can encourage. It can recommend. But it cannot require a single school to teach a single lesson about money.
I went through FLEC’s most recent annual report to Congress, the one covering fiscal years 2023 and 2024. Right there on page three, in plain language, is this sentence: “The FLEC does not have a standalone budget or staff.”
The commission is supported by a handful of people in Treasury’s Office of Consumer Policy, who have other responsibilities. That’s the infrastructure behind a 23-agency effort to improve financial literacy for 330 million Americans.
So what does FLEC actually do?
According to its own report, the commission is required to hold three public meetings per year, publish an annual report to Congress, maintain a National Strategy for financial literacy, and manage a website called MyMoney.gov.
That’s it. Three meetings. One report. One website.
The meetings themselves cover important-sounding topics. In recent years, they’ve discussed crypto-assets, climate change and household finances, financial fraud targeting older adults, and barriers facing immigrant communities. These are real issues. But a meeting is not a mandate. A discussion is not a curriculum.
But it gets worse.
In 2024, the Government Accountability Office issued a report examining FLEC’s efforts to improve financial literacy for older adults and people with disabilities. The GAO recommended that FLEC collect and report data on the outcomes of federal financial literacy programs.
Treasury’s response was telling. They agreed that data collection was important. But they acknowledged that “neither the chair nor Treasury has legal authority to compel agencies represented on the FLEC to collect and report data.”
Read that again.
The chair of the commission, the Secretary of the Treasury, cannot compel the commission’s own member agencies to report what they’re doing. FLEC can ask. It can encourage. It can request. But if an agency doesn’t want to participate meaningfully, there’s nothing FLEC can do about it.
This isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
When Congress created FLEC in 2003, they created a body that could exist without requiring ongoing appropriations, without stepping on the constitutional authority of states to control education, and without forcing any agency to change how it operates.
In other words, they created something that could look like action without being action.
I don’t think this was necessarily cynical. Education in America is constitutionally a state matter. The federal government has limited tools when it comes to K-12 curriculum. And coordination across 23 agencies is genuinely difficult.
But here’s what bothers me: FLEC’s existence allows elected officials to say they’re doing something about financial literacy. It provides cover. It creates the appearance of a federal response to a national problem.
Meanwhile, the actual work of teaching young people about money remains almost entirely absent from FLEC’s activities.
Look at what the commission actually focuses on. The annual report details programs for military families, veterans, older adults, justice-involved individuals, and tribal communities. These are all populations that deserve support. But they’re all adults.
Where’s the K-12 strategy? Where’s the push to get personal finance into schools before students sign their first loan documents?
It’s not there. Because FLEC has no mechanism to influence what happens in a classroom. State boards of education set curriculum standards. Local districts decide what gets taught. Textbook publishers respond to market demand. And FLEC sits in Washington, holding meetings and updating a website.
The contrast with how we treat other subjects is striking.
When the federal government decided that reading and math scores mattered, they created No Child Left Behind, with billions in funding and real consequences for schools that didn’t perform. When STEM education became a priority, federal grants flowed to schools and programs across the country.
Financial literacy got a commission with no budget and no authority.
I want to be fair here. Some progress is happening at the state level, outside of anything FLEC does. According to the Next Gen Personal Finance report, 35 states now require some form of personal finance education, up from just 7 in 2000. That’s real movement. But it’s happening despite the federal response, not because of it.
States like Florida have added financial literacy requirements, but even there, it’s just a half-credit course. Half a credit, compared to four years of English and math. The federal government has shown no interest in using its convening power, its bully pulpit, or its funding mechanisms to accelerate this progress.
FLEC is what happens when a government wants to acknowledge a problem without committing to solve it.
Twenty-three agencies gather three times a year to discuss financial literacy. They publish reports. They maintain a website. And nothing changes in the classroom where it matters most.
This is what it looks like when government wants to say it’s doing something without actually doing it. Activity without outcomes. Coordination without authority. Reports without requirements.
If we’re serious about financial literacy, we need more than a commission. We need curriculum standards that actually require something. We need funding tied to outcomes. We need the same urgency we’ve shown for reading and math applied to the knowledge that will shape every financial decision young people make for the rest of their lives.
Until then, FLEC will keep holding its meetings. And millions of young Americans will keep making the biggest financial decisions of their lives without any preparation at all.
Sources
- Financial Literacy and Education Commission, Strategy for Assuring Financial Empowerment (SAFE) Report, FY 2023-2024
- Government Accountability Office, Financial Literacy: Better Outcome Reporting Could Facilitate Oversight of Programs for Older Adults and People with Disabilities, April 2024
- Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003
- Next Gen Personal Finance, 2025 State of Financial Education Report