College finance courses are excellent at teaching frameworks. Discounted cash flow, capital structure, and market efficiency all have their place. What they rarely cover is how ordinary people actually encounter money — through credit cards, student loans, first paychecks, and confusing tax forms.
That gap is what pulled me toward financial literacy work. Understanding a model is one kind of fluency. Helping someone avoid a predatory loan or build a first emergency fund is another. Both matter; only one shows up regularly on a syllabus.
I do not think every finance student needs to become an educator. I do think more of us should leave school able to translate technical ideas into language that does not assume prior knowledge. Markets reward clarity as much as analysis.
The real cost of financial illiteracy is not abstract. It shows up in debt, stress, and narrowed opportunity. If a finance education does not make you more useful to the people around you, something important is missing.
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