Milton Should Have a Financial Literacy Course

By Caroline Blake ‘25

Last January, Milton students Hugo Eechaute ‘24, Simon Farruqui ‘25, and Isabella Alba ‘26 launched StockSense, a free educational app aimed at enlightening young adults on the basics of financial literacy. As their app rapidly gained success and local media attention, Eechaute and Farruqui took to the Massachusetts Legislature, testifying in support of Bill H.4199, which would make financial literacy a graduation course requirement in MA public schools. While Milton administrators praised both the app’s influence and their students’ efforts in state legislature, they conveniently side-stepped the irony in their applause: Milton has yet to institute a financial literacy program for its own students.

In a spotlight of the app’s co-creators, Milton cites our school’s “several opportunities to learn about finance and economics whether through economics courses or several busy student clubs focused on investments, microfinance…entrepreneurship, and economics.” While Milton does offer a variety of Econ courses—6 in total, including Calculus with Applied Economics—and demonstrates a student community passionate about such subjects, the course catalog curiously omits any personal finance education. 

Financial literacy, referring to one’s understanding and using various financial skills like earning, managing, and investing money, is by and large a privileged subject. Those with a financial literacy education are less susceptible to financial fraud, bankruptcy, housing foreclosure, and other financial struggles. This advantage is exemplified in financial literacy’s uneven dispersion among historically marginalized groups and heavy dependence on one’s education level and household income (Investopedia). Much financial literacy education is also passed down through generational knowledge. However, the impulse to blame parents for financial illiteracy fails to recognize the many barriers, both socioeconomic and political, to minorities’ financial success as these groups are often taken advantage of by predatorial financial services or denied access to certain economic resources. 

Just by attending Milton, we’re all placed not only in a privileged position at least opportunity-wise, but also in a bubble of immense wealth. Last spring’s State of the Academy student-body survey revealed the degree of that wealth: 80% of student respondents with knowledge of their family’s household income placed in the upper-class bracket of more than double the national median household income. Before the results or making of this poll, TMP 41 wrote an editorial about the need for more student awareness surrounding socioeconomic status, the one identifier Milton seems to let slip through the cracks. To summarize that article: Milton’s overrepresentation of wealth allows a student culture of ignorance, where wealth disparities go unaddressed. 

While I agree that our student culture around socioeconomic status needs drastic improvement, I’d argue that Milton’s current lack of a financial literacy course inhibits such progress. Milton’s financial literacy oversight reflects one of two attitudes—either that money talk is too “taboo” for school, or that perhaps there isn’t a need for such teaching because truthfully, most students already sit in a comfortable position of wealth. Both these attitudes demonstrate a pitiful excuse for ignorance and an assumption that only encourages a more rigid “hush-hush” student culture. Milton’s implementation of personal finance education would not only teach all students, regardless of their financial circumstances, the skills they need to succeed in life but also open a forum for discussion both in and out of the classroom. 

Some may argue that financial literacy is too personal of a topic to teach—that each individual’s needs are too variable based on their unique financial situation, or further that the institution of a personal finance course would only highlight the financial disparities between students, making for uncomfortable conversations. While this outlook stems from positive intent, it fails to acknowledge the inevitable ups and downs of anyone’s financial well-being. There’s a common denominator of financial literacy that most everyone ends up needing to know: banking, budgeting, saving, compound interest, credit, tax-paying, etc. Furthermore, avoidance of these topics opposes Milton’s core value of digging into the “uncomfortable” by listening to the diverse perspectives of those around us. Times said it best: “Financial literacy is not just about understanding numbers; it is a tool for empowerment and social justice.”

Returning StockSense co-collaborators Farruqui and Alba agree that financial literacy is applicable to everyone. Alba cites that a lot of Milton students work over the summer or pick up the odd babysitting job or two, so learning what to do with that money—perhaps placing it in a money market account to help it grow—would aid students in preparing them for college independence. Farruqui is more hesitant that Milton will adopt a new course but hopes they consider it, especially for seniors and juniors who are approaching the age of tax-paying. 

As it’s my last year at Milton, I doubt I’ll get to take a financial literacy course here, but I hope this administration will consider it for the betterment of its underclassmen and future students.