$DATI Financial literacy matters because 4 out of 5 American workers live paycheck to paycheck. The education system graduates young people with insufficient knowledge on how to complete their taxes, balance a household budget, check their credit score or build an emergency fund. Most disappointing is that school fails to address why a basic financial education is a crucial building block for adult life.

The lottery isn’t a magic bullet
A financially literate adult should have a basic understanding of the deeply predatory lottery system. Statically someone is 35 times more likely to be murdered in the Grand Canyon than win the lottery, but data is no match for the powerful emotional grip of a potential jackpot win. Low income Americans are targets of exploitative marketing tactics; successfully convincing 38% of people earning less than $25,000 income per year, that the lottery is the path to accumulating wealth. Even more disheartening is that people earning less than $10,000 a year spend, on average, 6% of their income on lottery tickets. This vicious cycle must be broken.

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