The reproduction of capital through financial education

Financial education initiatives for children and teenagers in Germany advance a specific kind of financial agency. It identifies independence with dependence on money circuits, and adulthood with responsible use of contractual rights and obligations. Financial education naturalizes this agency by anchoring it in personality and household while disembedding it from society. I demonstrate this ethnographically to argue that such agency encourages a judicious management of payments that would minimize claims on the public purse and maximize the potential profitability of household resources. Its goal is to facilitate the reproduction of capital in support of finance-led accumulation.