It was all making cents Wednesday, in the Alhambra Unified School District.

Students on Wednesday previewed the new personal finance curriculum that will be required for graduation in all California high schools starting in the 2030-31 school year.

With the June 29 enactment of Assembly Bill 2927, California became the 26th state to guarantee personal finance education to all students. The required, stand-alone class will teach skills for better financial outcomes, including a lower credit card debt, higher credit scores and lower payment delinquency rates.

The California personal finance education law applies to all public California high schools, including charter schools.

Next Gen Personal Finance, or NGPF, is the advocacy group that works with states, including California, to reach their lofty goal of having all states in the U.S. to require personal finance in their curriculums by 2030.

NGPF co-founder Tim Ranzetta said he was inspired to advocate for personal finance classes because he saw the immediate, positive effects personal finance classes had on students and their parents.

“I started to get emails from parents saying, ‘My son is coming home and we’re talking about investing. I don’t know a lot about investing. I’d like to get started,’” Ranzetta said. “And I was like, ‘wow, so if you do a good job teaching the students in front of you, you’re going to have an impact far beyond just that.’”

A few years after founding NGPF, the free curriculum NGPF created on personal finance is already used by 100,000 teachers in California, he said.

Along with Ranzetta, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and State Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Glendale, paid a visit to Alhambra Unified’s San Gabriel High School to shine a light on the new financial literacy curriculum to students.

With an auditorium of students eager to learn about their personal finance, finance influencer and author Yanely Espenial presented her experiences on the topic.

Espenial demystified stocks and bonds to students, explained the difference between finance and wealth and conversed with students about their questions about money.

Many students approached her afterward to ask questions about their own personal finance journey, or to get a signature on the book she authored and gave out to students for free.

“We want [students] to work hard and then we want them to be smart with their money and that’s what this does,” Portantino said about the new curriculum.

Under the new law, by the 2027-2028 school year all California high schools must offer all students the opportunity to take a stand-alone one-semester course in personal finance.

Starting in the 2030-31 school year, all California high school students — including charter schools — are guaranteed to take a stand-alone one-semester course in personal finance before they graduate.

Thurmond said that the event was a great way for students to hear about the nuts and bolts of personal finance.

“I felt like today was a great first step for the students to hear about [personal finance] and to learn what it is that we’re going to build into the school curriculum so that they can learn, if nothing else, to prevent them from having debt,” Thurmond said.

He also pointed out the rising increase in homelessness among high school students.

“We have 240,000 homeless students in our state, 10,000 are on their own,” Thurmond said. “They’re going to need to learn how to manage an apartment and a budget. I think budgeting is going to be important for all of us and for our students.”