Parents want schools to teach money and trust institutions that help

As more states attach money requirements to high school graduation, an Everfi survey reported by PLANADVISER asked 750 U.S. parents of children in grades 1 through 12 what they expect from financial education and who they trust to provide it. The answers approach unanimity: 88% said financial education should be a graduation requirement, 87% called money skills as important as reading, math, or science, and 85% said the subject belongs in the K-12 curriculum.

Those expectations sit awkwardly beside what parents say their children actually learn, with retirement planning the least-taught topic at 16%, investing at 34%, and saving and budgeting better covered at 55% and 53%; credit cards, taxes, and entrepreneurship trail at 36%, 27%, and 24%.

For an advisory firm, the numbers that matter are the trust ones: 79% of parents said they would trust a financial institution more if it provided financial education, and 76% said institutions should give back to the communities they serve. Banks ranked highest as potential sponsors, but RIAs and independent firms can still position themselves as educators rather than product sellers. Sixty-four percent of parents called privately funded financial education appropriate, and 62% are comfortable with a sponsor's logo on the material, a repeated touchpoint that keeps a firm in front of a family for years.

Only 63% of parents said they knew whether their children's school has financial education requirements, a share that falls to 54% among parents of high school students. That awareness gap is itself an opening: most families cannot tell you whether money basics are being covered, so the advisor who shows up with a credible curriculum fills a visible void.

No single provider owns the subject: 47% of parents said families are completely responsible for financial education, 41% assigned that level to teachers and schools, and 32% said financial institutions are completely responsible. The firm that supplies practical, age-appropriate content gets credit for solving a problem parents feel acutely.

The smartest move may be the smallest: a firm-created or sponsored financial literacy packet carried home by a middle or high schooler. Retirement planning, the topic parents report being taught least, is where an advisor holds the most credibility. A lesson on compounding or an introduction to Roth IRAs aimed at a teenager does not sell a product — it plants a flag in a conversation the family will have later, with the advisor's name already on the page.

Those conversations also reset next-generation expectations, and the Everfi numbers suggest they are happening later than they should. The firm that treats a ninth-grade budgeting worksheet as a client-acquisition tool will own the retirement conversation years before a competitor knows the family exists.