Treasury Secretary Bessent hosts financial literacy fair for students, warns against get-rich-quick financial habits

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent closed out April's Financial Literacy Month by hosting a fair at the Treasury Department, capping a month of events that also included a roundtable with community bankers and a forum with the Association of Mature American Citizens. Bessent, who became the nation's first openly gay Treasury Secretary in 2025, said financial literacy is a personal priority shaped in part by a childhood in rural South Carolina marked by financial hardship, including watching his father lose generations of family wealth through overleveraging.

Bessent described the initiative as central to his vision of the role. "In my own life experiences, as an economic historian, and now as the 79th Treasury Secretary, it is my firm belief that financial literacy is what fuels the American Dream," he said in a press release cited by Fox News. In an interview with the Associated Press, Bessent expressed concern about Americans pursuing get-rich-quick strategies — specifically naming lottery tickets, buy now, pay later loans, and cryptocurrency speculation — and urged people instead to invest steadily and "watch it grow."

The Treasury Department has pointed to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau data, reported by Fox News, showing that less than 30% of young people are financially literate and that as many as 74% of students say they need financial education. Bessent also discussed Trump Accounts — a financial vehicle that would provide $1,000 to babies born during the Trump administration, invested in the stock market and accessible at age 18 — as a tool to demonstrate "the power of compounding" to a new generation, according to the AP.

Critics interviewed by the AP questioned both the approach and the broader fiscal context. Emily DiVito, senior adviser for economic policy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said that the problem for many Americans is not a lack of financial knowledge but insufficient income amid rising costs of living. "You cannot preach penny-pinching while making it harder for Americans to pay their grocery, utility and healthcare bills," she said. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, praised Bessent's stated goal of cutting deficits to 3% of GDP but noted that achieving it "is going to take a combination of spending reductions, revenue increases and economic growth." She also observed that lawmakers themselves could benefit from a financial literacy class.

The AP also reported that the national debt surpassed $39 trillion in March and has grown past the size of the U.S. economy, with Trump's approval rating on the economy dropping from 38% in March to 30% in April according to AP-NORC poll data. The Treasury Department told the AP that the federal deficit decreased during Trump's first year back in office and that Republican tax legislation has returned money to Americans.