Kayden Samuel, a 17-year-old senior at Forest Grove High School in Oregon, has developed a free personal finance app called MontoEdu that is now used by more than 5,000 people in over 10 countries. The app provides over 40 beginner lessons on topics ranging from budgeting and saving to credit and investing, and it tracks each user's progress so they can learn at their own pace.
Samuel's initiative addresses a critical gap in financial education. Oregon lawmakers passed a law in 2023 requiring high school students to complete a half-credit personal-finance course for graduation, beginning with Samuel's class, the class of 2027. However, most adults never had such a requirement. According to the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, which tested more than 25,000 adults on financial-literacy questions, only 27% answered at least five of seven correctly in results released in April 2025. That figure is largely unchanged since the previous survey in 2021, meaning nearly three out of four adults failed to answer at least three questions correctly about topics like interest rates and inflation.
Because Oregon's new requirement won't help adults who have already finished school, Samuel built MontoEdu for them as well as for students. "A lot of people don't realize how much they don't know about money until they're actually making financial decisions," Samuel said. "By then, even a small mistake can end up costing them."
The app also caters to people who are more comfortable in another language or who don't speak English at all, as Samuel made the entire app available in other languages and added a built-in translation tool. It includes calculators for savings, interest and loans, plus a stock market game where users can practice trading with fake money. One user, Aditi Sharma of Massachusetts, completed the budgeting lessons and then reviewed her own monthly expenses. She uncovered several underused subscription services and canceled two of them, then put another $20 per month into the savings calculator to see how much she could grow her emergency fund.
Samuel plans to continue uploading lessons through his last year of high school and intends for MontoEdu, available at montoedu.com, to always remain free. "It's great to see how many people are using the platform, but what matters most to me is whether they're actually learning something they can use," Samuel said. "Even if someone just learns how to avoid a credit card fee or make a better budget, that's something that can help them for years."
The implications of Samuel's work extend beyond individual users. As financial literacy remains low among adults and states like Oregon begin to mandate personal finance education for students, MontoEdu offers a free, accessible tool that can support both formal education and self-directed learning. By providing lessons in multiple languages and a built-in translation tool, the app also helps bridge financial knowledge gaps for non-English speakers, making essential money skills more inclusive.
