COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio is among 30 states that require a semester-long financial literacy class for high school graduation.

Students in financial literacy learn about saving, building credit, debt, budgeting and fraud.

As with many states, Ohio’s financial literacy requirement is new, taking effect for students who entered ninth grade on July 1, 2022.

Nationally, 73% of high school students will have received financial literacy education before they graduate, according to an August report by the National Endowment for Financial Education.

This is up from only 9% of high school students in 2017, the organization said.

But in recent years, state legislatures have increasingly passed laws requiring students to obtain financial literacy, recognizing the complex financial choices teens face as they graduate and enter adulthood, according to the Council for Economic Education.

From budgeting and managing debt, to banking and fraud prevention and understanding the economy, students need a baseline of knowledge to navigate their financial futures, the council stated in a 2024 report.

States of all political stripes are requiring financial literacy to graduate, according to the National Endowment for Financial Education, including Ohio’s neighbors: Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

In the state budget the General Assembly passed in June, lawmakers made a change to financial literacy, permitting students who work in public and private school-based branches of credit unions to earn credit toward their graduation requirement.

Read More: Budding entrepreneurs: High school finance lessons blossom for brothers into business success

Some credit unions have run school branches for years, as well as offer financial literacy education.

The push for financial education is already helping former high school students who used the foundational knowledge to launch businesses.

In Lake County, twins Derek and Dominik Zirkle relied on the financial literacy education they received at Madison High School, provided in part by Theory Federal Credit Union, to start D & D Meadery, a honey wine business that opened in 2024 and distributes to more than 300 retail locations.

The class provided the Zirkle twins, now 24, “the foundations to begin the journey,” Dominik Zirkle said. The twins began their business by using their savings, living leanly and reinvesting profits. They sought help from a Theory certified financial counselor who had previously visited their high school class.

Lake County-based Cardinal Credit Union has run school branches for years.

A Cardinal employee runs the branches, but students can volunteer as tellers to gain hands-on experience, performing activities such as making deposits, withdrawing money and paying loans.

Credit unions, including Cardinal, deposit small amounts of money into student accounts so students can practice moving funds, writing checks, and making mistakes in a safe environment.

This allows them to “afford to make minor mistakes,” said Michael DeSantis, Cardinal’s educational finance coordinator.

Do you know the difference between interest rates and mortgage rates? What about a high-yield savings account?

Many of us learn about these terms well into adulthood, if at all, whereas public high school students in Florida do not.

That’s because financial literacy is now a requirement for graduation.

Ms. Martha Delgado doesn’t teach your typical high school class. When students leave her classroom, many will be well ahead of most adults in managing money.

“I worked during the summer, so 30% of my paycheck goes to my savings and the rest goes to my wants and needs,” Willne Pierre said.

Robert Morgan High School juniors Pierre and Diego Acosta are part of a growing group of Florida public school students who will graduate equipped with financial literacy and money management skills.

It’s all thanks to the Dorothy L. Hukill Financial Literacy Act that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in 2022. The law requires students to take a personal finance course, and the class of 2027 will be the first class to graduate under the new requirement.

The instruction students are getting goes beyond opening a checking or savings account; they’re also learning how to invest, use credit cards responsibly, understand credit scores, and even apply for financial aid when they go to college.

“They’re learning about when you go to get loans, how do the loans work, compound interest, simple interest, things that I would’ve loved to have when I was growing up as an adult and applying for a loan for a house or a loan for a car,” Delgado said.

Low financial literacy often leads to high debt. Across the country and here in South Florida, people are carrying more debt.

A data tool, the Opportunity Atlas, from the U.S. Census Bureau and Opportunity Insights at Harvard University, takes us inside how South Floridians are faring financially in adulthood.

When looking at people born between 1978 and 1985 across all income levels and races, those in Miami-Dade County had some of the highest levels of debt in the state.

In 2020, the average credit card balance was $5,800, and the average student loan balance was around $18,000.

The average credit scores of those growing up in Miami-Dade were lower than the national average.

“I feel like I can better help my kids because I love my mom, but she hasn’t been able to help me because she doesn’t understand that much, but Ms. Delgado was able to help me, and I want to help other people too,” Acosta said.

Delgado can relate to many of her students, who, like her, come from homes where their parents aren’t able to teach them to manage money responsibly.

“My dad was the single breadwinner,” she said. “We were five kids, so it was a lot for my father, so my dad was just work, work, work, work, so he really didn’t have the time or the tools to tell me anything about financing.”

The Opportunity Atlas shows the economic mobility disparities, that 90% of children born in 1940 earned more than their parents, but today only half do.

But it’s classes like Ms. Delgado’s that could go a long way to help bridge the wealth gap.

Acosta and Pierre are already well on their way to a better financial future. At only 16, both are QuickBooks-certified, and they’re not stopping there.

“My long-term goal is definitely to save for a house that’s number one, and I’m already starting to save for college,” Pierre said.

After a series of aircraft malfunctions, management challenges, and a strike by more than 33,000 machinists in 2024, Boeing has seen significant changes in its executive leadership over the past year. Malave began his tenure as EVP and CFO on Aug. 15, succeeding Brian West, who served as finance chief for four years. Kelly Ortberg became Boeing’s president and CEO in August 2024.​

Speaking Tuesday at the UBS Global Industrials and Transportation Conference, Malave said that, by the time he joined the company, he was already benefiting from culture changes Ortberg had put in motion.​

“What I’ve seen is a really engaged workforce, a very strong management team—one that has a can-do attitude,” Malave said. Management is focused on improvement and making Boeing better every day, he said. “To me, that is incredibly important, because that’s a sign of a performance culture, and that’s one of the things you look for when you join a company,” Malave said. “You can never really tell from the outside looking in what it’s actually like working in the company.”​

He described “active management” as a leadership team that is “willing to roll up its sleeves, get its hands dirty, help solve problems, and be part of the solutions—and that’s exactly what I see here at Boeing,” he said. “I’m that type of person who likes to get into the details, to focus on how we solve a problem rather than just observing it. From my perspective, I’ve been able to transition pretty easily into an environment like that.”​

At Boeing (No. 63 on the Fortune 500), Malave leads the finance organization, as well as strategy, business planning, and global real estate, and he serves on the company’s executive council. He was most recently CFO of Lockheed Martin and previously held senior finance roles at L3Harris Technologies. He also spent more than 20 years at United Technologies (UTC), including serving as CFO of Carrier Corporation when it was a UTC division.​

Boeing’s path back to positive cash flow

During the conversation, Malave also sketched out a financial reset for Boeing. He expects the company to move back into positive free cash flow in 2026 in the low single-digit billions. This is dependent upon ramping up production of the 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner and working through its stockpile of undelivered jets.

Malave described next year as the start of rebuilding toward Boeing’s long-standing $10 billion annual cash-generation target, with higher production rates key toward that ambition. The outlook marks a sharp improvement from roughly $2 billion in expected free cash outflow in 2025, and his comments helped lift Boeing shares by nearly 10% on Tuesday.

Risk, opportunity—and no ‘grenades’ for BDS

In July, Boeing veteran Stephen Parker was appointed president and CEO of its Defense, Space & Security (BDS) business, after serving as interim leader since September 2024. Malave is temporarily separated from BDS because of his recent role at Lockheed Martin, and Boeing has formally agreed he will not take part in BDS activities until the end of the year to avoid potential conflicts of interest with his former employer.​

Malave stressed that he does not plan to disrupt the BDS portfolio once he is able to engage there. “I think there’s been some investor angst in terms of, once Jay Malave gets access to the BDS program, there’s going to be a bunch of grenades that go off on all these programs,” he said. “I’m there to learn.” He added, “In any program, there’s going to be risk, there’s going to be opportunities. My job will be: How can I help them mitigate risk, and how can I help them realize opportunities? I’m not going in there with a mandate or an agenda to throw grenades at different programs.”

SherylEstrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Michele Allen was appointed CFO of Jersey Mike’s Subs, a franchisor of fast-casual sandwich shops, effective Dec. 1. Allen succeeds Walter Tombs, who is retiring from Jersey Mike’s in January after 26 years with the company. Allen brings more than 25 years of financial leadership experience. Most recently, she served as CFO and head of strategy at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Allen began her career with Deloitte as an auditor. 

 Jessica Ross was appointed CFO of GitLab Inc. (Nasdaq: GTLB), a DevSecOps platform, effective Jan. 15. Ross joins the company from Frontdoor, where she served as CFO. She has more than 25 years of experience in finance, accounting, and operational leadership at companies like Salesforce and Stitch Fix, and spent 12 years in public accounting at Arthur Andersen and Deloitte.

Big Deal

Adobe has released online shopping data for the 2025 holiday season covering Cyber Week, the five-day shopping period from Thanksgiving through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Consumers spent a total of $14.25 billion online on Cyber Monday, up 7.1% year over year and above Adobe’s initial projection of $14.2 billion (up 6.3% year over year). During the peak hours of 8 to 10 p.m., consumers spent $16 million every minute, according to Adobe.​

Usage of the buy now, pay later payment method hit an all-time high on Cyber Monday, driving $1.03 billion in online spend (up 4.2% year over year), according to the data. Adobe also found that on Cyber Monday, AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites (measured by shoppers clicking on a link) increased by 670% compared with last year.

Going deeper

Overheard

“Today’s AI-ready employee brings more than technical skills — they work smarter, feel more fulfilled, and contribute more effectively.”

—Sarah Hoffman, director of AI Thought Leadership at AlphaSense, writes in a Fortune opinion piece.