New Teaching Personal Finance Newsletter to Stay Connected
A Newsletter to Stay Connected
I am delighted to launch a quarterly newsletter to connect members of our teaching personal finance network. We are continuing to build a groundswell for teaching financial decision-making at the college and university level. At Stanford, we have more than 300 students enrolled in our course this term, and we look forward to teaching in the summer when students from other universities can also attend the course.
We’re working on the agenda for this fall’s Teaching Personal Finance Conference. The online format of the September conference will open access to more educators. That means providing many students with the skills they need to thrive in today’s complex financial environment. The latest findings from the P-Fin index—featured in this newsletter—confirm the need for personal finance education.
I am also happy to share some of the initiatives that the participants of the Teaching Personal Finance Conference have been engaged in to promote financial education. And make sure you look at the interview with Professor Daniel Chi about the popular personal finance course at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Share your experiences with us at stanfordifdm@stanford.edu. We will be happy to feature them in future issues of the newsletter.
Warm regards,
Annamaria Lusardi
Faculty Director, Stanford Initiative for Financial Decision-Making (IFDM)
Stanford Symposium Puts Financial Education in the Spotlight
Scholars at the Financial Education Symposium held at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in April 2025—financial literacy month in the United States—had an opportunity to attend a session on teaching personal finance, as well as hear about the latest research on financial literacy and personal finance.
IFDM Faculty Director Annamaria Lusardi moderated a fireside chat on best practices and resources for teaching personal finance. Professor Michael Boskin from Stanford and the Hoover Institution discussed the popular “Introduction to Financial Decision-Making” course offered to Stanford students since 2020. Patricia Kelly, from the University of California Santa Cruz, described the experience of teaching personal finance online to a large number of students. Diego Mendez-Carbajo, from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, explained how personal finance instructors can use FRED's resources for their courses.
Q&A: Professor Daniel Chi Chair
of the Department of Finance, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
with Professor Annamaria Lusardi, IFDM Faculty Director
Lusardi: When the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), started offering a personal finance course, many students signed up for the course. How many students?
Chi: We started offering two courses in the fall of 2023, and we quickly ramped up to over a thousand students per semester. Last fall, we had almost 1,300. This spring, we have almost 1,100. We had 23 sections last year, and this year we have about 20 sections each semester. So, for two semesters combined, we have over 40 sections of personal finance.
Lusardi: Forty sections of personal finance education is very impressive. Congratulations on this success! What do you think is behind this strong demand for personal finance among students?
Chi: As your research has shown clearly, more personal finance decisions have fallen on the shoulders of individuals. In the last several decades, it has increasingly become a more personal responsibility versus a more corporate responsibility to make financial decisions. And there is a strong demand among students and younger generations to understand how to manage their personal finances. At UNLV, we provide this opportunity for them to learn. There is a great need, a great demand out there. We just need to meet that demand.
Lusardi: What do you think is the effect of such courses on the students?
Chi: This course changes the lives of students. No question about that. In the Department of Finance, we have a vision statement, which is to improve life through finance education. This course speaks directly to that vision. I’d say overall wellbeing is a tripod: a tripod of our physical health, our mental health, and our financial health. Our financial health has to be strong for the tripod, which is overall wellbeing, to stand robustly. I think this course really speaks to the overall holistic wellbeing of younger generations.
Lusardi: What do you tell others who want to start such a course?
Chi: Begin by articulating a clear vision and highlighting the essential role of financial literacy—it is one leg of the tripod. Next is to rally broad support. The need for such a course is substantial, and it transcends academic departments or colleges. All students can benefit from a financial literacy course. So, it should be part of the General Education curriculum. Lastly, be resourceful with staffing; alumni are happy to serve as guest speakers.
Teaching Personal Finance Conference Participants Speak at CTREE
Members of the network created through the Teaching Personal Finance Conference at Stanford University took part in the 14th Annual Conference on Teaching and Research on Economic Education (CTREE) in Denver, Colorado.
George Washington University Professor of Economics Irene Foster organized a panel on May 30, 2025 at CTREE titled “Personal Finance for the 21st Century: Why It Is Important and How to Start a Course.” Foster examined storytelling and the behavioral aspect of personal finance, while Annamaria Lusardi, faculty director of IFDM, spoke about the importance of financial literacy. Other panelists include Dartmouth College’s Elisabeth Curtis discussing how to introduce a personal finance course in a Department of Economics, Loyola University New Orleans’ Gustavo Barboza addressing community service as an essential part of a personal finance course, and Denise Streeter of Howard University detailing how to make personal finance classes more inclusive.
FRED Debuts New Website
The launch of a new website for the online Federal Reserve Economic Data repository, better known as FRED, is making the largest free aggregator of U.S. economic data more accessible and easier to use, including for personal finance educators. The new website has also been designed with accessible design principles in mind, ensuring the site is usable by people with a wide range of abilities and through various technologies, ultimately creating a better experience for everyone.
For college educators, FRED offers easy-to-use teaching materials, including multimedia, that convert abstract concepts into real and relatable information. In classrooms where textbooks may quickly become outdated, FRED can fill the data gap with the latest numbers. It also offers lesson plans and experiential learning activities.
We look forward to working with the FRED’s team for content related to personal finance teaching.
New P-Fin Index Findings Reinforce the Need for Personal Finance Education
Data from the latest wave of the Personal Finance (P-Fin) Index show that personal finance knowledge remains low in the United States. In 2025, American adults were able to answer fewer than half of the 28 questions that make up the Index.
“This is a failing grade. Financial knowledge is not improving over time,” says Annamaria Lusardi, the faculty director of IFDM and a co-author of the Index, which is a collaboration with the TIAA Institute.
The newly released data show financial literacy is troublingly low among the young. Gen Z respondents could answer only 38 percent of the P-Fin questions correctly, the lowest of any generation studied—one more reason to add personal finance courses in colleges and universities.