Personal Finance Reimagined February 2026 for SCHEV and SCT

Here is the presentation for the SCEV / SCT meeting in February 2026:

Personal Finance Reimagined February 2026 for SCHEV and SCT

My name is Jeff Hulett – I help students achieve long-term, life-changing wealth!

I am a Personal Finance professor at James Madison University.  I am a Behavioral Economist and data scientist.  I am an experienced banker that has spent decades leading consumer financial products organizations like Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Capital One.  The one glaring reality from my decades leading these consumer products organizations is this.  Bank profit margins are often based on a gap in decision-making.  As good as banks are in making loan decisions are as bad as many people are in making personal finance decisions.  People are naturally infected with cognitive biases.  We are easily anchored and framed to be lead down decision paths benefiting the bank more than us.

That is the true personal finance challenge.  Today, I’d like to share with you how we are completely changing how personal finance and financial education is provided in our country.

First, let me share how I got here today.  Our new approach to personal finance is working!  It is working at several Virginia public universities – like JMU, Mason, VCU and Christopher Newport.  We also provide high school programming.  At SCHEV, we work with the Gear Up program focused on students from low-income backgrounds.

We know it is working well at Virginia's 4-year colleges.  But I am all about IMPACT.  We are helping about 1000 students a year.  But our impact could be much greater.  We have an opportunity to help 100,000s of students or more.  More than that, our community colleges are a significant source of students in need of financial education. 

So I went to my friend Dave Urso at Blue Ridge Community College.  He loves what we are doing and agrees it would be super aligned to the community college student.  But he said, “We have a problem – students will likely only take the class if it is transfer eligible.”  Then I said, “But wait, we already have proven success at the universities receiving the transfer, isn’t this enough?!”  He said, “Well, it is not that easy.”

So, this is what led me here today.  I need your help.  I would LOVE to find a way to help more Virginia students achieve long-term, life-changing wealth!

If it is ok, I’d like to share why personal finance is such a challenge and an overview of our teaching system.