#10 Good at maths (bad with money?)

#10 Good at maths (bad with money?)

18 July 2025

Having just returned from a rather expensive (but totally worth it! đŸ€™) music festival in Croatia, there’s one topic that’s feeling quite relevant this week: personal finance.

In our surveys asking the core WIWILAS question – What do you wish you’d learned at school? – personal finance is the topic that consistently comes out on top.

This kind of surprised me. Personal finance probably would’ve been at the bottom of my list. But maybe that’s just avoidance. Thinking about money stresses me out, and from my research this week, it seems like a lot of people share this anxiety.

The problem is: we’re kept totally in the dark as kids. School tries to prep you to make money while skipping over the critical part of how to actually handle it. Having been sheltered from financial decisions your whole life, you leave home in your late teens or early 20s suddenly expected to know how it all works.

Even if getting rich isn’t your goal, everyone wants financial independence and security. Having money might not guarantee happiness, but not having it definitely sets you up for misery.

So why aren’t we taught personal finance at school?

There are a few reasons that come to mind


  1. It’s emotionally loaded. Money isn’t just maths. It’s wrapped up in status, shame, family dynamics, and self-worth. Unpacking all that doesn’t neatly fit into a 40-minute lesson.
  2. Teachers aren’t trained in it. Most educators never learned this stuff themselves. You can’t teach effectively what you’re still figuring out.
  3. It’s assumed to be “taught at home”. Spoiler: Usually it isn’t. And when it is, it’s often outdated, biased, or anxiety-driven rather than practical.
  4. Governments benefit from financially illiterate citizens. A bit tinfoil hat? Maybe. But people who don’t understand tax, inflation, or interest rates are more likely to fall for flashy political promises and get stuck in lifelong debt cycles without asking tough questions.
  5. It challenges the system. Teaching kids how money actually works might prompt them to question our debt-driven, consumer-focused economy. Not ideal for maintaining the status quo.

Just 30 minutes of financial education a week could seriously alter the course of a kid’s life. But it’s unlikely schools will be adding that to the timetable anytime soon.

What to do instead

Luckily, thanks to this little thing called the internet, we don’t need schools to teach us everything anymore. We have free, instant access to the best resources in the world.

⭐ A quick Google search uncovered this superb Big Think video that brings together some of the sharpest minds in personal finance, perfect if you want to have your perspective on money challenged. I’ve also put together a cheatsheet you can keep handy.

⭐ If you’re keen to dig deeper, Morgan Housel’s book The Psychology of Money is a must-read that busts a lot of myths about money and personal finance. In it, he argues that financial success isn’t about intelligence, but how you behave: resisting lifestyle creep, staying calm in downturns, and thinking long-term. Even if you were top of the class at maths, it’s actually emotions that drive most bad financial decisions. Morgan also did a great 2-hour podcast, but if that’s too long for you to binge (or you can’t stand Steven Bartlett), I broke it down into the key lessons here.

⭐ Turns out there are people already teaching kids this topic! Money Heroes is a brilliant initiative offering free lessons to help children understand money from an early age. I may not be a parent or teacher, but I’m intrigued to see how they make it engaging, so I’ll be digging into their approach and sharing what I find soon.

What do you think really matters when it comes to personal finance? Should we be putting more energy into protecting what we’ve got, or is it smarter to focus on growing our wealth?

PS. If you haven’t filled out our quick survey yet, you can do it here → What do you wish you’d learned at school?