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Cheers to a terrific week in progress, ForbesBLK. Jabari here.
I am writing to you freshly removed from my first major surgery — a wisdom tooth removal. It’s weird having a hole in your gums. I can’t accurately describe the feeling, but it’s almost like chewing extra soggy cereal. It feels yucky.
My personal health issue aside, we’re nearing the end of Financial Literacy Month. This themed month isn’t as prominent as others, like Black History Month or Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But it should be, considering the U.S. seems to be regressing in financial education.
According to a money quiz, “Are you financially smarter than a 12th grader?,” which fintech platform Goalsetter gave to 1,000 undergraduates from schools including Stanford, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, it’s bad across social classes. The quiz consists of 15 high-school-level questions concerning financial education. The students answered only 51% of the questions correctly.
“We have students who are at the top universities in the country who aren’t even understanding concepts like compound interest versus simple interest and the 50-30-20 budgeting rule,” says Tanya Van Court, Goalsetter’s CEO. “We’re regressing. The purpose of that quiz is to demonstrate that it is all of us.”
Tanya Van Court, Founder & CEO, GoalSetter, speaks onstage during "Decoded: Leveraging The Future Economy of A.I." panel at the 2023 ForbesBLK Summit.
WireImageYou might remember Van Court. She spoke at our inaugural ForbesBLK Summit in November 2023. Since then, her company has raised a $9.6 million Series A extension. She founded Goalsetter in 2016 and raised roughly $30 million from investors, including billionaire Robert Smith and NBA superstars Chris Paul and Kevin Durant. Goalsetter is valued at nearly $70 million, according to venture capital research company PitchBook.
I first met Van Court in 2021 when I covered Goalsetter’s $3.9 million seed round. We discussed the Series A extension and her advice to Black women about attracting capital. Asked what it takes to lure prominent investors like Smith to a startup, Van Court suggests having a vision.
“People like Robert Smith, they’re presented with ideas every single day. So, why choose you?” Van Court says. “They will only choose you if they believe you have the capability to transform the world. And that requires vision.”
But back to the quiz.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I had to remind myself about the 50-30-20 budgeting rule. Though applied today, it took years of failure with money in my 20s — just like Van Court. At age 28, she lost $1 million in one day during the dot-com bust. How? Van Court wasn’t properly financially educated.
“In the past couple of generations,” she tells me, “people have not gotten any financial education. That means multiple generations of lack of knowledge.” Van Court says that 90% of well-off families are losing wealth by the third generation due to miseducation. “They lose their wealth because they’re not able to pass on that institutional knowledge,” Van Court says. “It’s not just about generational wealth. It’s about generational knowledge.”
So, regarding financial education, are you smarter than a 12th grader? (Take the quiz now.)
Enjoy this week’s newsletter. Be sure to keep up with me on LinkedIn and Instagram.
