I like to give people more credit than that. No one needs a formal education to make a budget or emergency fund. Having good examples going up helps significantly. But even without that, the internet, or a library, is an amazing resource to learn this kind of thing, where maybe someone can learn so they can teach it to their kids and stop the cycle. If we collectively throw up our hands and say no one can do anything about what they were born into and there is no upward mobility over the generations… then things can only get worse, because we’ve artificially closed off a main path for improvement.

This is basically what my dad did, and what someone along the lines had to do in every family tree with some level of “privilege”. People can be this person on their own family tree. It doesn’t mean they’ll go from broke to billionaire in one step; that’s not the goal. The goal would just be to start creating some stability and solid footing so if/when some shit happens there is a little cushion and people aren’t at the whims of the currently government to try and save them, as that’s never going to happen. And to create some education and habits around this finances in the home, as most schools are teaching this stuff.