What percentage of US states require a personal finance course in high school?

As of the 2025-2026 school year, 27 U.S. states require a standalone personal finance course for high school graduation, according to Next Gen Personal Finance's State of Financial Education Report. That number has grown from 8 states in 2020, but it still means roughly half of U.S. teens graduate without a guaranteed personal finance class.

What is the average allowance for kids in 2026?

The 2024 RoosterMoney Kids Money Report puts the average weekly allowance at $13.81 for kids ages 4-14, and T. Rowe Price's 2024 Parents, Kids and Money Survey puts teens 15-17 at around $30 per week. Most parents (68%) tie allowance to chores, per the AICPA 2024 survey.

How much do kids actually save according to Greenlight's data?

Greenlight's December 2025 Family Trends Report found that kids with debit accounts save an average of 38% of money received, with the average single-goal savings amount reaching $182 before they spend it. That savings rate is more than 8x the U.S. adult personal savings rate of 4.6% reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in October 2025.

Does the Money Wise Challenge 86% confidence stat hold up?

The 86% figure comes from a 2024-2025 study of 11,000 families who completed the 4-week Money Wise Challenge curriculum, compared against a 41% confidence rate in the control group. The researchers attributed the effect primarily to conversation frequency: 72% of program parents had weekly money talks with their kids vs. 28% at baseline, not to any specific lesson content.

How big is the gamified financial literacy market for kids?

Grand View Research valued the global gamified financial literacy market at $0.37 billion in 2023 and projects it will reach $1.92 billion by 2030, a 5.2x increase in 7 years. Demand is driven by Gen Z preference for app-based learning: 61% say they learned more about money from apps and short-form video than from school or parents (Investopedia, 2024).

By Maya Chen, Family Finance Editor May 26, 2026

Reviewed by the Penny Time editorial team

Part of our Money Skills hub.

Kids and Money in 2026: 25 Statistics Every Parent Should Know

Most parents make money decisions for their kids based on gut feel. The data tells a sharper story: where allowances actually land, which conversations move the needle on confidence, and how fast the gamified-literacy market is reshaping what kids learn before they hit 18. Here are 25 statistics from 2024-2025 research that should inform how you talk about money at home.

Allowance and earning

Allowance is still the most common entry point to money management, but the numbers have shifted faster than household routines.

$13.81 is the average weekly allowance for kids ages 4-14, per the 2024 RoosterMoney Kids Money Report. That works out to about $718 a year per child.
68% of parents who give an allowance tie it to chores, according to the American Institute of CPAs 2024 survey. The remaining 32% give it unconditionally or as a hybrid.
$30 per week is the average for teens 15-17, up from $21 in 2019 (T. Rowe Price Parents, Kids and Money Survey, 2024).
Age 5 is when most parents start an allowance, but financial education researchers at the University of Cambridge found money habits form by age 7.
$2.10 is the typical hourly equivalent kids earn for chores, based on a 2025 Greenlight analysis of in-app transactions across 6 million accounts.

If you want to benchmark what you give against age-tiered norms, the allowance calculator uses age, chores, and household standards to suggest a range.

Financial literacy gaps

The classroom side of this story is bleaker than the kitchen-table side.

Only 27 U.S. states require a standalone personal finance course for high school graduation as of the 2025-2026 school year (Next Gen Personal Finance State of Financial Education Report).
57% of U.S. teens cannot answer 4 of 5 basic financial literacy questions on the FINRA Investor Education Foundation 2024 study.
1 in 3 American adults cannot pass a 5-question financial literacy quiz that 14-year-olds in Finland routinely pass (TIAA Institute Personal Finance Index, 2024).
$1,506 is the average cost per person, per year, of low financial literacy among U.S. adults (National Financial Educators Council, 2024).
Kids who receive structured money education at home score 17 percentage points higher on financial literacy assessments than peers who do not (PISA 2022 Financial Literacy data, released 2024).

The Greenlight Family Trends signal

Greenlight's December 2025 Family Trends Report is the largest single dataset on how kids actually spend, save, and give. It draws on de-identified activity from over 6 million accounts.

43% of kids 8-14 with a debit card check their balance at least once a week, vs. 19% in 2021.
Savings rate among kid account holders averages 38% of money received, far above the U.S. adult personal savings rate of 4.6% reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in October 2025.
$182 is the average amount kids 8-14 save toward a single goal before spending it.
Charitable giving by kid account holders rose 22% year-over-year in 2025, with an average gift size of $9.40.
Teens 13-17 made an average of 3.1 investing decisions per month in 2025, up from 1.4 in 2023.

The Money Wise Challenge confidence stat

The Money Wise Challenge is a 4-week parent-led curriculum tested across 11,000 families in 2024-2025. Its headline finding is the one journalists keep citing.

86% of kids who completed the 4-week program reported feeling more confident making spending decisions, vs. 41% in a control group.
72% of parents said they had at least one money conversation per week during the program, vs. 28% at baseline.
Kids in the program saved 2.4x more of any money received in the 90 days after completion than the control group.

The takeaway most parents miss: the program's effect came from frequency of conversation, not the content itself. A wants vs. needs exercise done weekly outperforms a one-time finance lesson.

Gen Z and the gamified-literacy boom

The market for app-based, gamified money education has grown faster than almost any adjacent edtech category.

The global gamified financial literacy market was valued at $0.37 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $1.92 billion by 2030 (Grand View Research, 2024 report). That is a 5.2x increase in 7 years.
61% of Gen Z (ages 12-27) say they learned more about money from apps and short-form video than from school or parents (Investopedia Financial Literacy Survey, 2024).
$1,400 is the average savings balance for Gen Z teens 16-19 with a dedicated youth account, per Bank of America's Better Money Habits 2025 report.
54% of Gen Z report owning at least one investment account before age 21, the highest of any generation at the same age (Charles Schwab Modern Wealth Survey, 2024).

The parent conversation gap

The biggest gap is not in apps or curriculum. It is in how often money comes up at the dinner table.

34% of parents say they discuss money with their kids at least weekly, but 71% of kids say they want more of these conversations (T. Rowe Price, 2024).
Parents are 3x more likely to talk to kids about good grades than about household budgets (Fidelity Family and Finance Study, 2024).
Kids whose parents discussed saving goals with them by age 10 were 2.7x more likely to have a savings account in adulthood (National Endowment for Financial Education longitudinal data, published 2024).

If you have not had this conversation yet, the easiest entry point is a concrete goal. The birthday money calculator and the chore chart both work as a starting prompt, because they make the math visible and turn the conversation from abstract to specific.

None of these statistics, on their own, prescribe what any single family should do. Read together, they point in one direction: kids absorb money habits earlier than most parents assume, the gap between what schools teach and what kids need is widening, and the families that close it do so through small repeated conversations rather than one-time lessons.

Frequently Asked Questions

: As of the 2025-2026 school year, 27 U.S. states require a standalone personal finance course for high school graduation, according to Next Gen Personal Finance's State of Financial Education Report. That number has grown from 8 states in 2020, but it still means roughly half of U.S. teens graduate without a guaranteed personal finance class.
: The 2024 RoosterMoney Kids Money Report puts the average weekly allowance at $13.81 for kids ages 4-14, and T. Rowe Price's 2024 Parents, Kids and Money Survey puts teens 15-17 at around $30 per week. Most parents (68%) tie allowance to chores, per the AICPA 2024 survey.
: Greenlight's December 2025 Family Trends Report found that kids with debit accounts save an average of 38% of money received, with the average single-goal savings amount reaching $182 before they spend it. That savings rate is more than 8x the U.S. adult personal savings rate of 4.6% reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in October 2025.
: The 86% figure comes from a 2024-2025 study of 11,000 families who completed the 4-week Money Wise Challenge curriculum, compared against a 41% confidence rate in the control group. The researchers attributed the effect primarily to conversation frequency: 72% of program parents had weekly money talks with their kids vs. 28% at baseline, not to any specific lesson content.
: Grand View Research valued the global gamified financial literacy market at $0.37 billion in 2023 and projects it will reach $1.92 billion by 2030, a 5.2x increase in 7 years. Demand is driven by Gen Z preference for app-based learning: 61% say they learned more about money from apps and short-form video than from school or parents (Investopedia, 2024).

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