It’s too late to buy a 2023 Super Bowl advertising slot — Fox Sports reports the slots, some topping $7 million for 30 seconds, are all sold out. Beer and celebrity snackers are in. “Spokescandies” are out.
Also out are the financial pitches of last year’s “Crypto Bowl.” I’m a securities lawyer, so this is a relief for me, at least at my doctor’s visits. I’m hoping less hype will tame the appeal of complicated schemes for hard-working folk like my favorite nurse at NYU Hospital. He routinely pumps the blood pressure cuff — and me — for get-rich-quick schemes.
“Hola, Mama,” he says, shooing me to the scale. “Got any tips for me? I need to make a quick buck.”
“Fundamentals,” I say. “Study the market like you monitor my A1C and iron levels.” Not what he had in mind. Maybe he’d listen to Kim Kardashian.
Alas, we likely won’t see my dream 30-second spot on Sunday: a celebrity mash-up a la BandAid’s “We Are the World” touting financial literacy. My fantasy features yacht rock and household names crooning verses of good financial hygiene:
Open to Tom Brady trilling “compound interest is the GOAT.” DJ Khaled raps “70 equities and 30 bonds — that’s percent baby.” Floyd Mayweather hollers “take your 401(k) and your 529 to the max — or else.”
Ooh, there’s Steven Seagal, chanting “double up your mortgage payments now and then.” Cut to a platinum Kardashian sashaying “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”–style in cranberry satin and elbow-length gloves, as she twinkles, finger wagging, ‘”Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”
Then the bridge: Sam Bankman-Fried and those Winkelvoss twins float down in a heavenly chorus of “Educate, educate yourself,” conducted by Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler in a Hawaiian shirt.
Cut to a QR code like last year’s retro Coinbase pong screen driving clicks to a national high-school finance curriculum and “Schoolhouse Rock”–style elementary-school campaign. A hundred million viewers log in. The crown roars. It breaks the Internet! Virtual touchdown!
Yes, it’s a fantasy. Or maybe Activision Blizzard, home of Call of Duty and Candy Crush, will gamify it.
Read Related Also: Jelena Dokic stuns with chic new look by Witchery after being body shamed at the Australian Open
I cast this motley lineup since they all participated in America’s recent mainstream crypto craze. Some starred in last year’s advertising, others own bankrupt financial enterprises or settled with the SEC for online pitching. Or, in the case of Bankman-Fried, are under arrest for a massive financial fraud in the collapse of FTX, pitched by Brady last year. Activision’s not crypto but it just paid $35 million for misleading disclosures about executive bad guys.
Why not enlist high-profile “finfluencers” and their billions of followers in a national literacy campaign that will reset our next generation’s financial future? The 2022 TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index indicates “Americans function with a poor level of financial literacy” — with US adults, on average, correctly answering only 50% of 28 basic money questions, and 23% of respondents only answering seven questions correctly, the worst in any survey year.
The SEC and FDIC offer online resources. Gensler linked an educational video with creepy guys in “Risky Business” sunglasses in Kardashian’s EthereumMax settlement, but it’s no match for 350 million followers and sleek, curated brands. The Council for Economic Education’s 2022 survey of K-12 economic and financial education found that 25 states require a course in economics to graduate, but only nine require a standalone course and 14 allow it to be integrated into other required coursework. Various bills in New York could put us in the required category.
My husband learned finance skills on the path to Eagle Scout. Like the shoemaker’s kids going barefoot, my own kids did not have a standalone course in their Brooklyn private school. One took a high-school elective on investing from a teacher in a nighttime MBA program. I try to compensate with annoying lectures and books.
We pour energy into polarized issues like banned books, critical race theory, transgender restrooms and sports — issues marginal to most working folk’s daily bread. Meanwhile, what’s more nonpartisan, fact-based, race-blind and beneficial to national success than teaching useful life skills?
How about we debate budgeting, credit scores, compound interest, insurance, investment basics, mortgage fundamentals and the risks of debt for awhile? Savings — even a small emergency fund — offers documented mental-health benefits.
To our leaders, I offer the wisdom of Matt Damon in a cringey 2022 crypto.com ad: “Fortune favors the brave.” Come on, President Joe Biden, Congress and state legislators — and fellow Americans who care about our nation’s success. It’s time to focus on financial literacy. Sing it with me now: “Educate, educate yourself.”
This time next year, let’s play offense and develop jazzed-up branding focused on a financial-literacy playbook that breaks the Internet.
Touchdown!
Caroline Aiken Koster lives Brooklyn and is writing a memoir about her roots in Kentucky and the universal tales that resonate with all Americans.
