Fintech firm seeks financial advisors' help educating kids about money

A financial technology firm that began as a savings, investing and education app for parents and kids is expanding its programming for schools in a bid to turn Wall Street into "All Street."

Goalsetter's All Street will combine investment and entrepreneurship education into before- and after-school programs, in collaboration with school districts, financial advisors and other professionals, as well as corporate partners and nonprofits, according to CEO Tanya Van Court. All Street is slated to roll out in coming months. Her firm began its work in school financial education courses two years ago, and it has already spread to 10 states and 30 districts including New York, Detroit, Atlanta, Oakland, California and Ferguson, Missouri, she noted.

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Financial literacy advocates like Van Court cheer the growing number of states requiring economics and personal finance for high school graduation. But she expressed concern that many of these states are not providing the necessary resources to school districts. That could lead to a "chasm" between "haves and have-nots" —  the same kind of digital divide as occurred in the '90s and early 2000s with the rise of personal computers,Van Court said. 

After partnering with firms like Mastercard, Webster Bank and Edward Jones through its app and schools-based efforts, Van Court aims to work with more advisors in and outside the classroom because the looming generational wealth transfer means "the future of finance is family finance," she said.

"We are bringing the principles of Wall Street to every street and everyone," Van Court said in an interview. "We know that wealthier families need even more help teaching their kids, their grandkids about these core financial concepts, and they're often seeking this education from their advisor. … We need help teaching our families about financial education. We don't have the right kind of resources to engage the next generation."

The current landscape for financial literacy in the U.S.

As of last year, at least 35 states obligated high school graduates to complete personal finance courses, and 28 have made economics mandatory, according to the latest survey by the nonprofit Council for Economic Education, which designs and promotes curriculum and other tools to aid schools in teaching K-12 students about money, such as its Invest in Girls program. 

In addition to national standards that it, the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy and other stakeholders created in 2021 for six subject areas geared toward students respectively in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades, the organization's EconEdLink website offers advisors, educators and others interested in boosting financial literacy an array of resources. 

The last 10 to 15 years have proven very pivotal to financial literacy efforts across the country, according to Chris Caltabiano, the council's chief program officer.  

"People started to understand what should be taught, what personal finance could do. People started to understand that there were real positive, tangible outcomes from personal financial education," Caltabiano said. "In many ways, for me, the 2010s were a very important time in the evolution of personal finance as a discipline."

In the rush to confront what is a national problem with financial literacy, sometimes organizations and financial professionals may miss some of the nuance "that the standards don't tell students, 'You should do this,'" Caltabaino added. Instead, they seek to build their knowledge to make decisions based on their own particular goals. Advisors trying to get involved should think through how they're "understanding your audience, background, perspective, goals, priorities" from "the point of view of the person absorbing the information, not from the point of view of the person conveying the information," he said.

"Where finance professionals get tripped up is they have their own singular experience and they assume that experience is transferrable in all situations,"  Caltabiano said. "Not everyone else has had the same pathway that you have had. Meet them where they are. Work with them from that point."

Goalsetter app and educational updates

Since launching in 2019 and receiving investments from National Basketball Association stars Kevin Durant and Chris Paul, billionaire Robert F. Smith and arms of U.S. Bank, PNC Bank and Fiserv, Goalsetter has been acting toward that mission and showing some results. Pilot programs using Goalsetter's curriculum for two months with sophomores and juniors at a high school in Portsmouth, Virginia, and three weeks with incoming seventh and eighth graders at a middle school in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, each garnered higher performance in tests of students' personal finance skills after the courses, according to case studies by the firm.

"I definitely think that this group of students and the ones to come after will be more financially aware, and I think that ultimately that's going to help the community," Heidi Lewis, the director of curriculum and instruction with Portsmouth Public Schools, said in a statement included in the report. "Because now you have children who want to look at investing. You have children who want to look at saving, which differs from being completely unaware and thinking that you need to spend your money immediately and not understanding the positive aspect of investing."

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Through videos like one explaining annual percentage and interest rates on credit cards and loans, learning modules and exercises, pre- and post-assessments for teachers and other activities like an after-school investment club for kids with Edward Jones advisors in St. Louis, Goalsetter ensures students get "not only the theory, but they have the practice as well," Van Court said. Just as parents report that the Goalsetter app bulks up their own financial education while teaching their kids about money, the educators using Goalsetter's curriculum find it easy for their students to use while adding in their own knowledge as well, she noted.

"We can give you a whole curriculum that satisfies your requirement for your high school to have financial education, and we can give you the app, too," Van Court said. "We are really supporting these teachers to help improve their own financial lives while they're also improving the financial education of the children they serve."