MontoEdu Helps Students Master Personal Finance

FOREST GROVE, OR, October 27, 2026 /CourierPR/ -- Kayden Samuel, a 17-year-old senior at Forest Grove High School, has created a free personal finance app called MontoEdu that is now used by more than 5,000 people in over 10 countries. The app, which Samuel developed on his own, is designed for individuals managing their own money for the first time, such as a teen with a first paycheck or an adult who was never taught the basics.

MontoEdu is one of several projects Samuel has undertaken during his high school years. He created the app to address a gap in financial education, as many students graduate without knowing how to manage their own money. Samuel believes that spending years learning subjects in school, but not knowing how to manage their finances, is a significant oversight.

Oregon has also seen the gap in money skills among graduates, and in 2023 state lawmakers passed a law requiring high school students to complete a half-credit personal-finance course for graduation, beginning with Samuel's class, the class of 2027. Most adults never faced that requirement. The FINRA Investor Education Foundation tested more than 25,000 adults on financial-literacy questions, and its results, released in April 2025, found that only 27% answered at least five of seven correctly. That's largely unchanged since the previous survey in 2021. The 27% figure means nearly three out of four adults failed to answer at least three questions correctly about topics like interest rates and inflation. Oregon's new requirement won't help those adults, since they've already finished school, so Samuel built MontoEdu for them as well as for students.

A user named Aditi Sharma, from Massachusetts, completed the budgeting lessons and then went over 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 also had in mind people who are more comfortable in another language, or who don't speak English at all. So he made the entire app available in other languages and added a built-in translation tool. The app includes calculators for savings, interest, and loans, and a stock market game where users can practice trading with fake money.

Samuel plans to continue uploading lessons through his last year of high school, and he intends for MontoEdu, available at montoedu.com, to always remain free.