Every August, the routine returns. Backpacks are filled and a new set of subjects appears on the syllabus. For most of us, that season is long behind us. But the questions it raises are worth revisiting, because one subject follows people much further into adulthood than the periodic table ever did.
Start with what formal education is worth. The data is clear. Each additional level of attainment has historically improved two outcomes at once: earnings, and the odds of working at all. Someone without a high school diploma has faced roughly 6% unemployment, with average earnings near $37,000. A bachelor’s degree halves the unemployment rate and roughly doubles the earnings. At the top, unemployment falls near 1% and earnings exceed $110,000.
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Source: Clearnomics, Bureau of Labor Statistics ©2026 Clearnomics, Inc.
But a diploma is issued once, while the decisions it is meant to prepare you for keep arriving for the next 50 years. Which brings us to the subject no one ever graduates from.
For years, the complaint about financial literacy was simple: they don’t teach this in school. It was a fair criticism, and for a long time it was accurate. Less so now. A growing number of states, Michigan among them, now require a personal finance course before graduation. And yet the complaint persists.
The reason has less to do with schools than with the subject itself. Financial literacy is not a body of facts to be memorized. It is a practice, applied to circumstances that keep changing. A 17-year-old can learn what compound interest is. That same person, at 34, must decide how much to contribute to a 401(k) while carrying a mortgage. At 52, they might be balancing a concentrated equity position, caring for an aging parent, and a child’s tuition. The concept never changed. The situation did, and it will keep doing so.
Meanwhile, the supply of financial information has exploded, and artificial intelligence has changed its character. The old internet handed you a search result. AI hands you an answer: fluent, immediate, and delivered with complete confidence. For many people it has become the first place a financial question is asked. It is a useful tool, but it has one particular blind spot worth naming. AI is very good at answering the question you asked. It is not so good at telling you that you asked the wrong one. It works only from what you thought to tell it, and it will almost never tell you no. Information is no longer scarce. But discernment is.
At Planning Alternatives, we produce content for one purpose: to help you understand what is changing, why it matters, and how it may affect your life. Our aim is to provide the insight and context you need to make more informed decisions. That tension, between abundant information and scarce discernment, helps shape everything we publish. Each piece must clear a critical bar: does this help our readers understand what they could not on their own? It is why our content is built in layers, not volume.
Our Weekly Market Update recaps what happened in markets during the week. The Quarterly Investment Commentary reviews asset class performance, shares our research and investment perspective, and explains what both mean for portfolio positioning. Beyond the Markets steps back from both, taking a subject from ordinary life and following it into the ideas and decisions that help shape a financial life over decades, not quarters.
When something that reaches our clients changes, we write about it. Last summer that meant what the One Big Beautiful Bill could mean to you. More recently it was An Overview of Direct Index Investing, which explains what changes when an investor owns an index’s individual securities rather than a fund that tracks them: positions can be excluded, losses harvested at the stock level, a concentrated holding unwound gradually. The index is the same for everyone; what it should look like inside a particular portfolio is not.
Not everything we do arrives in writing. Our Outlook events and webinars take the same standard live, where a subject can be addressed while it is still unfolding and questions can be answered in the room. Earlier this year, our session on AI met that topic at the moment it began reshaping how people search for answers. Our mid-year investment Outlook event did the same, and the clients who attended told us the timing was much of what made it so very valuable. Commentary, insights, upcoming events and recaps are available on our website under Insights and typically shared on LinkedIn as well.
Averages, like the ones in the chart above, describe populations. They do not describe people. That is where our Advice team comes in. Specialists across planning, tax, estate, and investment strategy build around what a client is genuinely trying to accomplish and the constraints they may face. They ask the questions no one thought to ask. They sit with families across generations, where the hardest decisions are rarely about math. The value is not in knowing more than the internet knows; it is in knowing what applies to you.
Financial literacy delivered this way is not a semester. It is a relationship, sustained across market cycles, career changes, and generations. It is the difference between being told what compound interest is and being shown what it could do for your life.
The best education never really ends. It just gets more personal. And we’re committed to continuing to share our financial insights with you.
For more insights, check out our Investing Resources page. The material provided is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be construed as investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell securities. Planning Alternatives is an investment advisory firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). SEC registration does not imply a certain level of skill and/or expertise.
At Planning Alternatives, we help you manage your wealth in alignment with your values, goals, and the legacy you want to leave. As fiduciary advisors, we always — and only — make decisions in your best interest. If you’re interested in exploring how thematic investing might fit into your personal path to True Wealth, let’s connect.