The purpose of this white paper is to outline how the ongoing struggle of many consumers to manage their finances can be mitigated in the future by focusing specifically on youth financial education. What we propose here is a comprehensive strategy to impart personal financial-management skills to young people while they are in school. We are focusing on school-based financial education policy for two reasons: first, most Americans are poorly prepared to make informed financial decisions; second, school-based financial education has the potential to reverse the current trend of poor financial preparation for future generations of American consumers.