Nadav Reis

Helping medical professionals build wealth, reduce taxes & invest smarter. Get your financial life together. I can help.
Financial advisor | Educator | Investor

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

@noahkagan @BigChon128 That's the way to do it!!!

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

You wake up. Open your banking app. The balance reads: -$1,047,200.

Bank error? Identity theft? Then you look closer.

It's not a balance. It's a forecast — the lifetime cost of financial illiteracy for the average American family.

A new study from TIAA and Stanford just landed: U.S. financial literacy is at a 10-year low. Adults answered only 47% of basic money questions right. Gen Z managed 38%.

We are getting worse at this. Not slowly. Visibly.

And the price tag isn't theoretical. People in the bottom literacy group are four times more likely to struggle to make ends meet — and three times more likely to be one car repair away from disaster.

Think of it like driving without ever reading a road sign. You might be fine for a while. You might even feel free. But every wrong turn compounds — and one of them will be expensive.

Here's the part that matters for parents: It doesn't just fix itself and go away. Most schools still don't teach personal finance. The math on a Roth IRA, a 401(k) match, an APR on a credit card — most kids will graduate having never seen any of it explained in plain English.

So today's micro-action: pick ONE money word that maybe you or your kid uses but doesn't understand. Interest. Credit. Match. Compound. Take three minutes at dinner. Define it. Use a real number.

That's the whole curriculum. One word, three minutes, one real number.

Your kid won't get the $1M bill all at once. They'll get it the way everyone does — twenty bucks at a time, for forty years.

You don't have to teach them everything. You just have to make sure they don't drive blind.

Welcome to the family.

#PersonalFinance #FinancialLiteracy #ParentingTips

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

Picture this: it's 3am. You're staring at the ceiling, doing math on a number that's been chasing you for years.

Welcome to America in 2026 — where household debt just hit a record $18 trillion.

Here's the part nobody says out loud: most of that weight you'r†che carrying isn't the dollars. It's the story you've built around them.

I tell people this all the time: your debt isn't a person. It can't follow you home. It can't sit next to you on the couch. It's a number in a database — patient, yes, but not alive.

The reason it FEELS alive is because shame moved in and started paying rent.

Think of debt like a tenant living in your head. You didn't sign that lease. But every late-night spiral, every "I'm so bad with money," every time you flinch at a balance — that's the tenant getting comfortable.

Here's the reframe: separate the math from the meaning.

The math is a payoff plan. Boring. Calculable. Doable.

The meaning — "I failed, I'm behind, I'll never catch up" — is the part keeping you stuck. Because if you believe you're broken, you'll keep avoiding the math.

I work on teaching personal finance to kids and teens to that they DON’T wake up at 3am with these thoughts.

What should you do to keep this from happening to you? Try this. This week, open the spreadsheet. Or the app. Or the back of a napkin. Write your actual debt number down with no story attached.

Just: I owe $X. Minimum payment is $Y. Months to zero at $Z extra: this many.

That's it. No shame. No "I should have." Just the math.

You'll notice something strange — the number is almost always smaller than the cloud of dread that's been chasing it.

You're not bad with money. You've been carrying a tenant who never paid rent.

Time to evict the story. Keep the math.

Personal Finance can be fun.

#PersonalFinance #FinancialLiteracy #MoneyMatters

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

@noahkagan @BigChon128 How was the rest of the experience with the Range Rover?

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

I'd like to connect to more parents looking to teach their kids about money. Feel free to say hello.

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

"Saving" might be the most boring word in personal finance.

Let's fix that.

Saving isn't about restriction. It's about buying your future self a Tuesday off.

Not a yacht. Not retirement-in-Bali. Just a Tuesday — when the car breaks down and you don't panic, when the kid needs braces and you write the check, when work goes sideways and you breathe.

Every $20 you don't spend today is a small permission slip you're handing your future self: "It's okay. You're covered."

That's not boring. That's freedom in action.

Finance can be fun.
#FinancialLiteracy #PersonalFinance

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

3 things I wish someone had told me about money at 25:

1. Your 401(k) match is not a "benefit." It's a tax-free raise you have to fill out a form to claim. If you don't claim it, you're working for less.

2. Lifestyle creep is not a vibe. It's a quiet tax on your future self — paid in subscriptions, upgrades, and "I deserve this."

3. The best time to start investing was 10 years ago. The second-best time is on your lunch break today.

None of this is complicated. All of it compounds.
You don't need to be smart. You just need to be early.

#personalfinance #financialfreedom #homeschool #homeschooling

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

A new study just dropped, and the number stopped me cold: Americans got only 47% of basic money questions right (Gen Z at 38%). Lowest in a decade.

Then I remembered school never taught us any of it. And I felt that old quiet panic — the "wait, was I supposed to know this?" one.

If you've ever stared at a 401k form, a mortgage quote, or a credit card statement and thought, "I'm an adult, why does this still feel like a foreign language?" — you're not broken. You were never handed the dictionary.

Here's what I tell parents who feel behind: the gap isn't a character flaw. It's a curriculum hole.

Picture a kid who shows up to chemistry on day 1 — but the teacher quietly skips chapters 1 through 9, then hands out a final exam in chapter 10.

That kid will fail. Not because they're dumb. Because nobody taught them.

Now picture you, at 22, signing your first credit card application. Or at 30, picking between Roth and Traditional. Or at 45, opening a mortgage statement and realizing $1,200 of the $2,000 payment is interest.

You weren't dumb. You walked into chapter 10 too.

The new report (TIAA + Stanford) says low-literacy adults are FOUR times more likely to struggle to make ends meet. Not because they earn less. Because nobody handed them the dictionary. Until now.

I am trying to fill this gap. I just finished a course covering Personal Finance essentials and real world decision making. Who do you know would benefit from this? Share it with them.

https://t.co/DnzqhD2dHf

#personalfinance #financialliteracy #privateschool #homeschool #homeschooling #students #money

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

American adults just scored 47% on a basic financial literacy test.

Gen Z scored 38%.

Both are the lowest numbers in a decade.

Pause on that. We are sending kids into a world of variable-rate mortgages, "pay-in-four" grocery splits, ESAs, HSAs, Roth conversions, target-date funds, and tax-advantaged everything — with a 38% on the test that explains any of it.

This isn't a kid failure. It's an adult failure that kids inherited.

We don't teach personal finance in most American high schools.

Not because it's hard. Not because it's controversial. Because for decades, we collectively decided it could "wait until the real world."

The real world doesn't wait. The real world ships them a credit card at 18 and a student loan at 19.

Picture a car with no gas gauge. No speedometer. No key.
You hand it to a 17-year-old, point at the highway, and say "good luck." Then, when they crash, you say "kids these days are reckless."

That's not a driver problem. That's a car problem.

Financial illiteracy works the same way. It looks like personal irresponsibility. It's actually a missing dashboard.

Your move this week:

Pick ONE money concept — interest, taxes, insurance, index funds, budgeting. Just one.

Sit down with the teenager (or 20-something) in your life. Explain it for 5 minutes. Not 50. Five.

Then ask them to explain it back to you in their own words. That's it. That's the whole lesson.

You just added one gauge to their dashboard.

If enough of us add one gauge, the highway gets a lot less terrifying.

Welcome to the family.

#personalfinance #financialliteracy #parentingtips #homeschooling #homeschool

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

Here's why I'd rather teach a 15-year-old about money than a 42-year-old.

If you handed me $10,000 and said "help one person never struggle with money again," I wouldn't spend it on a 42-year-old.

I'd spend it on a 15-year-old. Every time.

Not because adults can't change. They can. Most of the people I talk to are doing it right now, late at night, with a calculator and a knot in their stomach.

But by 42, the conversation isn't just "here's how compounding works." It's also "here's how to forgive yourself for not knowing this at 22." It's mortgage, marriage, kids, identity, scar tissue. Money advice has to dodge all of that just to land.

A 15-year-old doesn't have scar tissue yet. They just have questions.

Picture two seeds.

You drop one in soft soil. Three days later: a sprout. You drop the other onto concrete. Same seed. Same sun. Same rain. Nothing happens, because the ground won't let it.

Adult financial advice often lands on concrete. Not because adults are bad soil — but because they've been walked on, paved over, parked on. Telling them to "just save 15%" can feel like an insult to the version of them that survived a pandemic, a layoff, a divorce.

A 15-year-old is soft soil. Tell them "compounding doubles your money about every 7 years at 10%" and they don't argue. They just file it.

Then they spend the next 30 years acting on it while everyone else is unlearning what they were never taught.

Your move this week:

Pick ONE financial fact you wish someone had told you at 15. Just one.

Then tell it — once, casually, like you're sharing a recipe — to a kid in your life. Niece, nephew, neighbor, your own.

Not a lecture. A line. A seed.

You don't have to be a financial advisor. You just have to be the adult who said it first.

#PersonalFinance #FinancialLiteracy #ParentingTips #homeschooling

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

@gerstenzang Congrats!

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

Compound interest in 5 lines:

1. You roll a tiny snowball. It picks up snow.
2. The snow it picks up also picks up snow.
3. The bigger it gets, the more it grabs.
4. Stop pushing — and it keeps rolling on its own.
5. Most people quit at line 1 because the ball looks small.

The ball is not small. The HILL is.

Put $50 in an index fund this week and let it start rolling. Future-you doesn't need a fortune. Just a head start.

#personalfinance #FinancialLiteracy #homeschooling #america

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

@catrosemcmillan @X Hello, I live deep in personal finance.

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

@danielzohan1 Don't forget the rinse and repeat. What could go wrong? I don't know him, but the quote doesn't sound like it's a build long term value point of view.

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

Your bank texts you. Account error. They show you a $1,000,000 charge.

You'd lose your mind. You'd call the manager. You'd record the call. You'd refuse to sleep.

Now imagine the same charge — but spread across 30 years, in $300 weekly slices, with a friendly logo on it.

That's not a heart attack. That's just… life.

Most middle-class Americans will pay over a million dollars to credit card companies, mortgage lenders, car loans, and student loan servicers over the course of their adult lives. Total interest paid on a $400k mortgage at 7% for 30 years: about $560k. Carrying a $7k credit card balance at 22% with minimums only: roughly $20k+ in interest before you're done.

It already happened. The number's just hiding behind small payments and confusing statements.

Picture a leaky faucet.

A leaky faucet drips $0.0001 of water at a time. You don't notice. But come back in a year and you've lost 3,000 gallons.

Debt interest is the leaky faucet of personal finance. It barely makes a noise — $40 here in finance charges, $300 there in mortgage interest, $19 in a "low APR offer." Year after year. Quietly.

Credit card companies aren't villains in a movie. They're plumbers who worked WITH YOU to install the leak.

Your move this week:

Pick ONE debt — credit card, car loan, anything. Open the statement. Find the line that says "interest paid this period" or "finance charge."

Multiply that by 12.

That's your faucet — running for one year.

Now ask: if a real plumber quoted you that price to fix one drip, would you hire them today?

If yes, you've just found the first leak to fix.

You don't have to plug every drip. You just have to notice them.

Welcome to the new part of your life.

#PersonalFinance #FinancialLiteracy #MoneyMatters

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

@noahkagan That's so crazy. I am glad you are back. How hard is it to catch traffic like that?

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

@judeanceo Mazal tov

[Nadav Reis @FinSavvyParent]

@RonConway All should be good and you should return to full health before too long.