I Taught Financial Literacy in Bangladesh and Realized Americans Need It More

the classroom in Mirpur

The room was 40 degrees Celsius and the ceiling fan barely functioned. I stood in front of 35 Bangladeshi college students at a private university in Mirpur, Dhaka, teaching a course called Personal Finance for Young Professionals. The course was my own design, created in partnership with a local NGO called BRAC that had invited me to develop a financial literacy curriculum. My students were between 19 and 24 years old. Most came from lower-middle-class families. None of em had ever been taught how to manage money. Their parents saved in gold and fixed deposits. Their peers invested in the Dhaka Stock Exchange like it was a casino. I was there to offer somethin in between. The first question I asked on day one was simple: how many of you have a budget? Two hands went up. Outta thirty-five. I knew right then that this course mattered more than anything I had done in my previous career as a financial analyst in London.

what Bangladesh gets right about savings

Bangladesh has a gross domestic savings rate of approximately 31 percent of GDP, which is higher than the United States at 18 percent and the United Kingdom at 17 percent. This statistic surprises people who associate Bangladesh with poverty. The savings are mostly in informal channels: gold, land, an deposit schemes offered by NGOs like BRAC and ASA. These microfinance institutions serve tens of millions of Bangladeshi savers with products that require minimum deposits as low as 200 taka, about $1.65. The interest rates on these savings products range from 6 to 9 percent annually, which is modest but real. The system is imperfect. It's exclusionary for the awfully poorest. But it reflects a cultural norm round saving that the West has lost. My students in Mirpur all saved money. They just didn't know how to allocate it efficiently across different asset classes and risk levels. They were saving blindly an hoping for the best.

the mortgage rate that made students gasp

I dedicated one class session to comparing Bangladeshi an Western financial products. When I displayed em that the average 30-year mortgage rate in the United States was around 6.5 percent in early 2026, several students laughed. They figured I was joking. In Bangladesh, mortgage rates from commercial banks like City Bank and BRAC Bank ranged from 9 to 11 percent for a 20-year loan. The concept of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage barely exists. Most Bangladeshi home loans are variable-rate with tenors of 15 to 20 years. The monthly payment on a 10 million taka loan, approximately $82,000, at 10 percent for 20 years would be about 96,500 taka or $795. That's for a modest apartment in Dhaka, where decent housing in areas like Gulshan or Banani costs 20 to 40 million taka. My students did the math in their notebooks and you could see the realization spreading across their faces. Homeownership thru a mortgage in Bangladesh was mathematically out of reach for anyone without family wealth or an extraordinary salary. The dream of owning your own home, which is central to American financial life, was a fantasy for most of em.

the credit score that doesn't exist

Bangladesh does not have a consumer credit scoring system comparable to FICO in the United States. The Credit Information Bureau, or CIB, maintained by the central bank, tracks loan repayment histories but its coverage is limited to formal bank borrowers. The estimated 80 million Bangladeshi adults who have rarely taken a bank loan have nah credit record at all. Mobile financial services like bKash, which has over 70 million registered users, generate transaction data that could theoretically be used to build credit profiles, but Bangladesh's regulatory framework hasnt caught up. I clarified the US credit score system to my students an they were fascinated. The idea that a three-digit number between 300 and 850 could determine whether you get an apartment, a car loan, a job, or even a date on some apps, read both powerful and dystopian to them. One student named Rafiq asked whether the credit score system was fair. I said it was fair in the sense that it was data-driven and consistent. It was unfair in the sense that it systematically disadvantaged people who had been excluded from the financial system for generations. Rafiq nodded. He understood exclusion intuitively in ways that my former colleagues in London rarely could.

balance transfer as a foreign concept

When I clarified the concept of a balance transfer, moving high-interest credit card debt to a fresh card with a lower promotional rate, the classroom went silent. Not because the concept was complicated. Cuz credit card debt at 24 percent APR was a problem they couldnt imagine having. In Bangladesh, credit card penetration is estimated at less than 3 percent of the adult population. Most people don't have credit cards. Those who do tend to be upper-middle-class professionals who pay their balances in full each month. Revolving credit card debt, the kind that destroys American households, barely exists in Bangladesh. I talked through the economics of a balance transfer: moving $5,000 from a card charging 24.9 percent to one charging 0 percent for eighteen months, saving approximately $1,050 in interest if the balance is dropped down during the promotional period. The students understood the math immediately. They also understood, without me saying it explicitly, that these transfers are a symptom of a financial system that makes it too easy to borrow and too profitable to stay in debt. Bangladesh's financial system has the opposite problem: it's too hard to borrow for productive purposes and too many people are excluded from formal credit entirely.

the Roth IRA conversation that broke me

A student named Tahmina asked me whether Bangladesh had anything like a Roth IRA, where investment gains grow tax-free if you hold the account til retirement. I had to tell her no. Bangladesh has no tax-advantaged retirement account. There is a government pension for formal sector employees called the General Provident Fund, but it pays a fixed 13 percent interest and the corpus is limited. For the 87 percent of Bangladeshis who work in the informal sector, there is no retirement savings vehicle at all. No 401k, no IRA, no pension, nothin. People work til they can't and then they depend on their children. I had clarified the US retirement system in glowing terms during earlier classes. The employer match. The tax deferral. The compound growth over decades. Tahmina's question made me realize how extraordinary that system is, how much of American retirement security is built on institutional infrastructure that most Americans take for granted and many emerging market citizens can barely imagine.

the bKash moment that changed my thinking

In April 2026, I watched a student named Kamal send 5,000 taka to his mother in Sylhet using bKash in about eight seconds. The transfer cost 5 taka, approximately 4 US cents. No bank account required on either end. Nah branch visit. No documentation. Kamal's mother received the money on her phone, which cost approximately $15, and could use it to buy groceries at any of the 350,000 bKash-accepting merchants across Bangladesh. I had laid out years in London analyzing complex structured products and derivative strategies that moved billions of dollars between institutions with armies of compliance officers. None of it was as elegant or as socially useful as that 5-taka bKash transfer. The developed world's financial system is sophisticated in ways that serve the already wealthy. Bangladesh's financial system, despite its limitations, is innovating in ways that serve the previously unbanked. I jotted down a note to myself that day: sophistication is not the same as impact.

what my students taught me

I went to Dhaka to teach financial literacy. I came away understanding that financial literacy is not a set of skills. It's a relationship with money that is shaped by the institutional environment you live in. My Mirpur students were not financially illiterate. They understood saving, budgeting, and the value of gold as a store of wealth. What they lacked was access to the financial tools that would let em convert savings into productive investments. Nah credit ratings meant no credit access. No retirement accounts meant nah tax-advantaged compounding. No 30-year fixed mortgages meant no homeownership path. The financial literacy gap between Bangladesh an the United States is real. The institutional gap is bigger. I returned to London in June 2026 with a suitcase full of Bangladeshi tea and a head full of uncomfortable questions about my own financial privilege. I also returned with a renewed commitment to financial education, not as charity, but as justice. People who understand money make better decisions for themselves and their communities. The 35 students in my Mirpur classroom will teach their families. Their families will teach their neighbors. That's how systemic change starts. One classroom at a time in a 40-degree room with a broken fan.