‘What are your financial goals?’ MassMutual FutureSmart program reaches 6 million young people over 10 years
SPRINGFIELD – Students from kindergarten to 12th-grade who took multiple financial literacy courses became 21% more confident in their financial skills, the MassMutual Foundation says.
“That was really the whole goal of the FutureSmart program when we launched it,” said MassMutual Foundation President Dennis Duquette . “They were in fact learning financial concepts and their knowledge gains were significant.”
On top of that, taking a financial literacy course like FutureSmart serves to get parents and kids talking about money, the program claims. The foundation is a separate entity from MassMutual, the financial services company based in Springfield.
“How are they taking that knowledge and actually putting it into practice in their lives?” asked Duquette. “It’s not about selling life insurance at all.”
Begun in 2015, MassMutual’s FutureSmart asks students to pretend they mayors of their cities. In those roles, they must weigh spending, income, savings and wants versus needs. The program is available online and can be presented in a classroom.
“What are your financial goals?” the material asks students.
The FutureSmart financial curriculum recently crossed a milestone of reaching more than 6 million students in the United States and Puerto Rico since its inception in 2015. MassMutual has reached more than 68,000 students in Massachusetts.
The program helps students define terms like work-life balance, lifestyle cost, career path and company culture.
Public concern over student readiness to handle and manage money has pushed lawmakers to act. Massachusetts is one of at least 40 states and Puerto Rico with pending legislation on financial literacy in 2025, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.
The MassMutual Foundation, through FutureSmart, is able to give schools the resources to meet the requirements. The program has a separate online teacher portal.
“They themselves are not as confident as they’d like to be,” Duquette said of teachers.
The MassMutual Foundation has found that the middle school years – ages 11 to 13 – are the “sweet spot” for reaching students with financial information. That’s deemed to be old enough to understand the materials, but still receptive.
Stories by Jim Kinney
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