Our team criss-crosses the country advocating for guaranteed personal finance courses in state legislatures, state boards of education, and beyond. Why do we prefer guaranteed over required or mandated? Don't they mean the same thing?

NGPF’s mission is that by the year 2030, ALL students will be guaranteed to take a standalone personal finance course of at least one semester before graduating from high school. The NGPF community is working to reach this goal through a combination of grassroots efforts - educators championing the importance of teaching personal finance for all - and statewide efforts.

When the NGPF Mission 2030 Fund (our affiliated advocacy nonprofit) visits education stakeholders, we generally avoid using the words "required" or "mandated," even though they are accurate descriptors for effective financial education policies. In fact, we are absolutely, 100%, without-a-doubt committed to required/mandated personal finance courses, but we almost always use the phrase "guaranteed" instead. You can see this wording all over NGPF's Mission 2030 advocacy materials, from the LIVE U.S. Dashboard to the Community Advocacy Toolkit.

It might seem like a tiny semantic difference, but we believe this distinction between guaranteed vs. required/mandated is a key component of the success of the Mission 2030 movement.

Why say "guaranteed" instead of "required?"

1. It clarifies the choice for policymakers. Let's play a round of Would You Rather!

Let's say you are a state policymaker who believes personal finance education is important. Would you rather:

• implement a policy that guarantees 100% of students in your state receive comprehensive personal finance education OR
• implement a policy that allows 39% of students in your state to receive some personal finance education?

New research from the Journal of Financial Wellbeing at Cambridge University shows that, in states where personal finance graduation requirements allow for embedding this instruction into another class or content area, only 39 percent of students attend schools where any personal finance instruction is required. While personal finance is technically "required," only 39% of students receive personal finance instruction! It'll make your head spin, but it turns out that compliance with this type of embedded graduation requirement is deeply unequal. Why? Ask any teacher who is suddenly "required" to embed a bunch of new personal finance standards into their existing curriculum, and they'll tell you why.

In contrast, when we guarantee equal access to a standalone personal finance course of at least one semester, we redirect the conversation back to an effective policy: delivering comprehensive personal finance education for ALL students.

2. It's all about the subtext! The words require and mandate understandably annoy people, especially in education. The subtext of these words is that personal finance must be a dreaded slog, just another on the long-and-growing list of demands that our society heaps on teachers' and students' plates. In contrast, the subtext of "guaranteed" is trust and reliability. When we guarantee a personal finance course, we commit to high-quality, comprehensive instruction that goes beyond just "checking the box."

3. Personal finance courses merit positive vocabulary. This is not your average graduation requirement! Personal finance is a course that, taken for just one semester in high school, leads to an average $100,000 benefit per graduate in lifetime cost savings and wealth, creates positive ripple effects among parents, and improves teachers' own financial wellbeing, too. This is a course that teachers enjoy teaching, and students get excited to learn. In the context of education policy, guaranteed means the same thing as required, but we prefer to use language that captures the inspiring nature of this course.

4. Framing for voters. Shoutout to the NGPF Behavioral Economics Unit! Here's a fun example of the Framing Effect for you: when you buy disinfectant, would you rather buy a product that is 99.9% effective, or 0.1% ineffective? Chances are you'll go with the 99.9% effective product, even though functionally these two phrases mean exactly the same thing.

When polled in any state, 80%-90% of voters of every political persuasion consistently respond "Yes" when asked, "Do you think all high school students should be guaranteed to take a basic course in personal finance?" Given the subtext of mandates, we would expect support to dip if voters were polled with the same question, but substituting "mandated" for "guaranteed."

Students deserve for the education system to have their back. 

Young people are the future of our families, our communities, our economy, and our country. Together, we can guarantee them an education experience that is relevant to their lives and empowers their dreams. Their teachers (many of whom are reading this post) are more than capable of delivering on this guarantee.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to follow along with the progress of the Mission 2030 Movement on NGPF's LIVE U.S. Dashboard and LIVE Financial Education Bill Tracker. As of writing, 25 states and counting will guarantee a standalone personal finance course of at least one semester for all their high school students by 2030!

About the Author

Christian Sherrill

Former teacher, forever financial education nerd. As NGPF's Director of Growth & Advocacy, Christian is laser-focused on our mission to guarantee all students a rigorous personal finance course before crossing the high school graduation stage. Having paid down over $40k in student loans in the span of 3 years - while living in the Bay Area on an entry level teacher's salary - he's eager to help the next generation avoid financial pitfalls one semester at a time.