An Unexamined Assumption

Most financial literacy programs are built on an assumption nobody bothers to state out loud: that financial literacy is primarily a technical competency, numerical reasoning, budgeting calculations, understanding financial products (Lusardi & Mitchell, 2014).

It’s a reasonable-sounding assumption. It’s also why so many programs teach percentages, checkbook balancing, and monthly budget templates, skills that assume a stable income and a planning horizon that extends past this week.

Here’s the problem with an unexamined assumption: nobody tests it, because nobody realizes it’s there to test. I only really saw it once I started asking a different question entirely. Not “does this person understand compound interest,” but “what is this person’s actual, lived relationship to time, risk, and survival right now.” That’s not a numeracy question. It’s a phenomenological one, a question about the structure of someone’s experience, not their test score.

Once you ask that question instead, the curriculum has to change. Someone whose entire planning horizon is the next 48 hours experiences money differently than someone planning for retirement in thirty years. Teaching them the same content, at the same pace, using the same framework, isn’t neutral. It’s built on an assumption that quietly doesn’t apply to them.

This is the reasoning underneath why our program doesn’t start with a fixed curriculum module. It starts with understanding where someone actually is, then builds forward from there.

I’m curious how many other fields carry an assumption like this, one so foundational that almost nobody thinks to question it. Have you run into one in your own work?

Author: Sandra Roussel
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