Youth financial education is changing—and credit unions have an opening

Something important is happening in education right now, and credit unions should be paying attention.

Two very different experiments are underway. In the U.S., AI-first schools like Alpha School are betting that personalized software can compress core academics into a couple of hours a day, freeing up time for real-world skills like financial literacy and entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, Sweden is moving in the opposite direction. After years of pushing toward digital classrooms, the Swedish government is now investing over $200 million to fund a return to printed textbooks, after finding that digital-first classrooms were hurting foundational skills like reading comprehension and sustained focus.

What should we make of two well-funded bets completely at odds with one another? Perhaps that there’s a third factor they are both overlooking.

The biggest challenge facing youth education isn’t how content is delivered. It’s the confidence to act on what they’ve learned.

At Dream Publishing, we surveyed 400+ teens, parents, and teachers while building Start Young and Build Freedom—a story-driven, co-branded book for young teens that teaches entrepreneurship and smart money habits.

In our teen sample, 84% said entrepreneurship education is vital to their financial well-being. But only 3% felt very confident they could actually start their own business.

That’s a huge gap.

When we asked what would make them more confident, the top answers were mentorship, real-world examples, and hands-on challenges. Not better apps or better textbooks.

Teens already have access to abundant information. What they need is permission to act on what they learn—and a path to do so.

Credit unions are facing a generational gap.

The average credit union member is 53 years old. Only about 7% of members are 18–24, even though that age group represents 18% of the U.S. population. Many Gen Z consumers can’t name a single credit union they’re eligible to join.

For an industry built on community, that gap isn’t just troubling—it's an existential threat.

The default response has been to go digital: better apps, smoother onboarding. Those investments matter for a generation raised on screens. But if the Swedish experience teaches us anything, it’s that digital efficiency alone doesn’t create the kind of engagement that builds loyalty. Tech can improve access. But human connections and trust still drive outcomes.

Credit unions have something neither a private AI school nor a national curriculum shift can offer: a local presence that families, schools, and organizations already trust.

That’s the opening.

What’s been missing is a resource to make the most of the opportunity: something that teens actually want to engage with, that parents see as genuinely valuable, and that connects back to your institution naturally.

I’m not anti-tech. I co-founded Zogo, a financial literacy app that partnered with 250+ credit unions and reached millions of people. I believe in what technology can do.

But our research at Dream Publishing kept pointing to the same barriers for teens: distraction, feeling overwhelmed, and a desire to get offline. The data on reading backs up our conclusions. Across dozens of studies, print consistently outperforms screens for deeper comprehension—especially with informational material like personal finance books.

So we built Start Young and Build Freedom as a physical, co-branded book that is funny, illustrated, and story-driven. We designed it with Chad Beckerman—the original art director of Diary of a Wimpy Kid—who understands better than anyone how to make a book feel inviting to a reluctant reader.

An app icon gets buried in a folder on the third screen of a smartphone. A co-branded book lives on a nightstand. It gets picked up by a young teen, flipped through by a parent, and consulted time and again for advice on taking smart risks, saving strategies, and creating your own luck.

A 14-year-old can read about someone who started multiple businesses as a teenager. She can work through a challenge that helps her expand her comfort zone and develop her first business idea. And after making her first profits, she knows how to open a savings account at the credit union that gave her the book, with a fuller understanding of the credit union difference.

That’s not a temporary digital interaction. It’s the beginning of a lifelong member relationship.

The question credit unions should be asking is not whether to go digital, but what digital cannot do that they still need to do.

Digital tools are good at scale and convenience. They are less good at creating the kind of emotional resonance that builds long-term loyalty. A young person who downloads an app is a user. A young person who receives something physical from a credit union, something designed specifically for them, with that credit union's name on it, is beginning a relationship.

The most effective non-digital youth engagement tends to share a few qualities. It meets young people in spaces they already trust, schools, libraries, community programs, rather than asking them to seek out the credit union. It gives them something they actually want to engage with, not something they feel they should engage with. And it connects naturally to the adults around them, parents and teachers, who are often the ones making decisions about financial institutions on their behalf.

Physical resources fit this model in a way that digital tools struggle to. A book that lives on a nightstand gets picked up more than once. It gets seen by a parent. It starts a conversation. It creates a moment that an app notification cannot replicate.

Credit unions that are thinking seriously about the next generation of members do not have to choose between being modern and being present. The most durable strategy is both, using technology to improve access and efficiency, while investing in the kind of tangible, community-level presence that builds the trust technology cannot manufacture.

AI-first schools are trying to buy personalization. Sweden is trying to buy focus.

Credit unions can pursue something more durable: trust and relevance, delivered locally, at the exact moment young people are forming beliefs about money and their future.

Technology offers credit unions reach; a physical book earns them trust. And a book featuring a teen entrepreneur’s real-life adventures delivers relevance for what young people crave in an illustrated book format they’ll actually enjoy.

Youth financial education is changing—and credit unions have an opening to grow confidence, not just membership.

If you’re exploring youth engagement, I’d love to share a sample chapter and a simple pilot rollout plan tailored to your market. Find us at dreampublishing.com.