Finance
Alabama gets an ‘A’ in personal finance education
Alabama’s high schools have retained their collective grade of A in a national report card on how well they teach personal finance.
Alabama earned an A in 2017 in the National Report Card on State Efforts to Improve Financial Literacy in High Schools. Continuing its good work, the state was awarded an A in the updated 2023 Report Card, issued by The Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt.
The state joins Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia as the only states to earn As, by requiring students to take a standalone, half-semester course in personal finance, or its equivalent, in order to graduate.
John Pelletier, director of the Center for Financial Literacy, says that by 2028, 23 states are projected to have an A grade. So the 1.7 million students attending high schools in grade A states in 2023 is expected to increase to 6.4 million students in five years.
Pelletier says state policy makers are responding to families without financial safety nets during the pandemic, as well as to advocacy by educators, administrators, parents and students. He also notes that there is a recognition that personal finance knowledge and skills are crucial in today’s complex financial world, and cites the expanding availability of free online curricular resources offered by state departments of education and by non-profit organizations.
“Alabama continues to lead the nation in high school personal finance education,” Pelletier said. “They have had a required a full year career preparedness course since 2017, which includes the equivalent of a semester financial literacy course. And a new law passed this year will ensure that, beginning with the class of 2028, all students that graduate will take a new standalone personal finance and money management course.”
Pelletier notes that Alabama allows the career preparedness course to be taken in grades 8-10, while research shows that the optimal grades are 11th and 12th, just before young people enter college, work or the military and are faced with many complex financial decisions.
A 2022 poll by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) indicated that 88 percent of adults wanted their states to require a semester- or year-long financial education course for graduation from high school, and 8 in 10 adults wished they were required to take such a class when they went to school.
As momentum for personal finance education grows, teacher training will become more important. The Center projects that 30,000 highly trained personal finance educators in just the grade A and B states will be needed by 2028.
The 2023 Report Card includes a review of the racial and ethnic disparities in financial capability drawn from the most recent FINRA National Financial Capability Study written by researchers at the FINRA Investor Education Foundation (Angela Fontes, Hanna Gilmore, Gary Mottola and Olivia Valdes), as well as research by Dr. Carly Urban of Montana State University highlighting the benefits of requiring financial literacy education in high school.
“Financial literacy is linked to positive outcomes, like wealth accumulation, stock market participation and effective retirement planning, and avoiding high-cost alternative financial services,” says Pelletier. “Conversely, poor financial literacy and negative financial behaviors often go hand in hand.”
“High school personal finance education can help alleviate the cycle of poverty that exists in our nation,” says Pelletier. “Requiring all students to take a standalone financial literacy course, regardless of their race, ethnicity or economic status, is an important step our nation can take toward reducing inequality.”
An interactive national map with information on the 50 states and the District of Columbia and a downloadable copy of the full National Report Card is available here: 2023 National Report Card. A fact sheet on Alabama can be found here.
To produce the Report Card, the Center again conducted detailed reviews of high school graduation requirements, state academic standards for personal finance education, and laws, regulations and guidelines that relate to how each state delivers personal finance education in its public high schools.
The Law Firm Antiracism Alliance provided hundreds of hours of research to support the Report’s analysis of the current landscape of state legislation on personal finance education.
Finance
Stock market today: Nasdaq, S&P 500 edge higher ahead of Christmas break
US stocks opened higher to kick off the final, shortened trading session before the Christmas holiday. The benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) edged up about 0.2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rose roughly 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) hugged the flatline.
Wall Street is looking to enter its Christmas break rejuvenated, after tech stocks including AI chip giant Nvidia (NVDA) led the march higher on Monday. Markets close at 1 p.m. ET today and are off tomorrow for Christmas Day.
Sizable gains on Friday and Monday have put the indexes back on the path toward their record highs, from which they took a Fed-fueled nosedive last week.
Wall Street is reassessing the path of interest rates next year as it grapples with the reality that the Fed mostly pulled off a so-called soft landing — but couldn’t fully shake the US economy’s inflation problem. According to the CME FedWatch tool, most bets are on two coming holds at the Fed’s January and March meetings, followed by a toss-up in May.
Meanwhile, many eyes continue to be trained on Nvidia, which saw a more than 3.5% gain on Monday. As Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley writes, 2024 was Nvidia’s year, with the stock up some 180%. But 2025 could contain plenty of challenges.
LIVE 2 updates
Finance
China’s Finance Ministry Vows Greater, Faster Spending in 2025
China’s finance ministry reaffirmed it will increase public spending with a greater focus on boosting consumption to support the economy next year, ahead of growth headwinds from looming US tariffs.
China will “expand the magnitude of fiscal spending and accelerate the spending pace,” according to a statement published Tuesday following a two-day national conference held by the Ministry of Finance on fiscal work in 2025.
Finance
All 11 sectors expected to broaden out in 2025, strategist says
United Parcel Service (UPS) is just one of Powers Advisory Group Managing Partner Matt Powers’ top picks for 2025, calling the postal carrier and logistics operator as having “defensive characteristics and high valuations” as it looks to get carried by several tailwinds next year. UPS is set to release fourth quarter earnings results on January 30, 2025.
Powers sits down with Wealth host Brad Smith to talk about the other opportunities he is seeing across markets (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) in the new year.
“Broadening it looks like so all 11 major sectors are actually expected to have year over year earnings increases in 2025. And I think we had or will have seven of the 11 this year, which suggests broadening out,” Powers tells Yahoo Finance.
“But the S&P [500] is trading at 21 times forward earnings, while dividend growth equities which is kind of our core focus are at 19 times. So we see again going back to that back-to-basics approach shifting towards value and just underappreciated areas of the market.”
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Wealth here.
This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
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