I spent the past four weekends meeting with hundreds of individuals to provide basic financial advice. I spent countless hours discussing budgeting and the importance of setting financial goals and an emergency fund. I spent more time helping individuals try to dig out of financial emergencies, save their homes, and get control of their financial lives. Over and over, people told me they had virtually no financial education. Worse yet, they had never had anywhere to turn to get that financial education.

How can this be? How can financial education be left entirely to chance in our country? Money is one of the most powerful forces in society, yet we head into the world with only the mis-education we received from media and our parents to guide us. We are not even given the choice to seek good financial education.

Our education system and financial industry are failing in this regard. We must introduce financial education at a young age, the force money plays is simply too powerful to continue to ignore. Poor money knowledge destroys marriages, destroys lives and destroys our country.