My dad, a high school government and economics teacher, tried to set me on the path toward financial freedom early. “Start investing as soon as possible!” he would say, while presenting charts on the power of compound interest to me on our family desktop. These casual finance lessons went over my head as a pre-teen, though now I’m very grateful to have grown up in a family in which my parents were financially knowledgeable and wanted to empower me to make smart financial decisions for myself as early as possible.

It’s evident to me now, as an adult, just how rare this type of guidance is for young people. As the child of educators, I saw first-hand how determined teachers are to equip the young people in their lives and classroom with the knowledge they need to be well-prepared for adulthood.

Despite my parents’ efforts to give me financial smarts, I stumbled through my early 20s with very little understanding of the concrete steps I could take to put myself in a better financial position long-term. I luckily avoided any egregious errors, however, I didn’t have the perspective to plan very far ahead.

It makes sense that, at age 20, my view of my life was short-sighted. Taking a long-view of life, and of my finances, is a perspective I’m still working to cultivate today. However, we are doing our young people a huge disservice by not adequately preparing them for the myriad of financial decisions they need to make for themselves in early adulthood, the consequences of which will follow them for years.

Guiding students through personal finance topics such as paying for college and buying their first car are important, of course. But it’s just as important that these classes are teaching students to have a long-term view of their own life.

Early adulthood is a whirlwind of huge decisions and life changes. We can help our young people stay grounded and stable in this time of their lives by providing a foundation of knowledge that will carry them through the most important financial decisions of those early adult years.

It’s also become clear to me since joining Next Gen Personal Finance that this curriculum is not just essential knowledge for students, the content is life-changing for teachers as well. The movement for financial empowerment transcends age and demographic, and personal finance is essential learning for anyone wishing to shape their own future.

I am thrilled to be working for Next Gen Personal Finance, and am especially excited to be working in Teacher Success to ensure that teachers using our curriculum have the means to do so successfully. It feels very appropriate that, after a lifetime of having been raised by educators, I am now doing what I can to serve them.

About the Author

Abby Richards-Hatton

Abby joined NGPF as an Administrative Assistant in August 2025. She spent several years working as a legal assistant for a corporate law firm before transitioning into the nonprofit field. She is a graduate of San Francisco State University where she studied Political Science.

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