On June 20, Governor Greg Abbott signed HB 27 into law, making Texas the 29th state to guarantee a personal finance course for all high school students, starting with the class of 2030.

“As a result of this legislation, 76 percent of high school students in the U.S. will now be guaranteed to take a standalone Personal Finance course,” said Yanely Espinal, Advocate for NGPF Mission 2030 and Director of Educational Outreach at Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF), a leading nonprofit dedicated to providing high-quality personal finance curriculum and professional development at no-cost to educators and school districts. “This landmark policy is evidence of the strong, bipartisan support for equipping Texas students with essential real-world financial fundamentals.”

Representative Ken King (R - Canadian) jointly authored HB 27 with Representative Linda Garcia (D - Austin) to ensure that every student graduates with the financial knowledge needed to make informed decisions about money, from budgeting and understanding products and services offered by local banks and credit unions, to building credit and investing. 

Senator Pete Flores (R–Pleasanton) sponsored the companion bill, SB 625 in the Texas Senate, playing a key role in advancing the effort.

“Guaranteeing every high school student a comprehensive financial education is essential for fostering lifelong self-reliance and economic competency,” said Representative Ken King.

Representative Linda Garcia commented, “With the passage of this bill, the Texas House has made it clear that we are prioritizing our students and preparing them to enter the workforce and manage their own finances. I’m grateful to Chairman King for his continued work on financial literacy initiatives and Speaker Burrows for making this a priority in the Texas House. This bill will make a material impact on the number of students graduating with the knowledge and skills they need to be financially prepared for life after high school.”

The bill is structured to minimize fiscal impact by utilizing existing resources and free, open-source instructional materials, ensuring statewide implementation without significant new expenditures. The requirement goes into effect with the incoming first-year class for the  2026–2027 school year.

Educators and community leaders widely agree that requiring financial literacy education will close a critical gap and prepare young Texans for the economic realities they’ll face upon graduation. 

Vincent Branch, a  longtime educator and leader in Houston ISD shared, “My own financial education came from on-the-job training and costly mistakes. Wouldn’t we rather our young people learn these valuable lessons in our public schools, rather than in the school of ‘hard knocks,’ as I and so many other adults in Texas did?”

Teachers have demonstrated strong readiness for this change. Texas teachers have completed nearly 20,000 cumulative hours of free professional development workshops with Next Gen Personal Finance. These sessions vary in topic from taxes and investing, to consumer skills and new types of credit. 

This legislation reflects growing national momentum as Texas joins a majority of states in recognizing the importance of equipping students with practical financial skills for lifelong success. The NGPF Mission 2030 Fund, a nonprofit that advocates for this policy in all states, is a supporter of HB 27. 

The NGPF Mission 2030 Fund is a nonprofit advocacy affiliate of Next Gen Personal Finance and provides technical support to policy makers in Texas, as it does in all states in pursuit of its goal to guarantee all high school students in the United States will be guaranteed to take a personal finance course before graduation. NGPF Mission 2030 Fund’s advocacy has led 19 states to pass laws ensuring a guaranteed personal finance course for high school students.

About the Authors

Yanely Espinal

Born and raised by Dominican, immigrant parents in Brooklyn, Yanely is a proud product of NYC public schools. She graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in 2007 before going on to receive her bachelor's degree at Brown University in 2011. As a Teach For America corps member, Yanely taught third and fourth grade in Canarsie, Brooklyn. She received her master's degree from Relay Graduate School of Education in 2013. She spends her spare time making YouTube videos about personal finance on her channel, MissBeHelpful. Yanely also loves to dance, sew, paint, listen to podcasts, and babysit her 10 nieces and nephews!

Hannah Rael

As NGPF's Marketing Communications Manager, Hannah (she/her) helps spread the word about NGPF's mission to improve the financial lives of the next generation of Americans.