Financial freedom may take $10 million

Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings are among a growing class of financial influencers who want to help people be smarter about money.

The duo — a former financial advisor and a teacher, respectively — launched the podcast “Earn Your Leisure” nearly five years ago with a mission to promote literacy around money and entrepreneurship.

About 1 in 7 people lost more than $10,000 in 2022 due to a lack of financial literacy, according to a study by the National Financial Educators Council.

“I realized there were certain things that weren’t taught inside schools — financial literacy and financial education being one of them,” Millings said of the idea to create Earn Your Leisure.

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Today, Earn Your Leisure has expanded to create multiple podcasts, host live events and offer an online educational platform, EYL University. It has 1.4 million Instagram followers and another 1.4 million YouTube subscribers. Its flagship podcast has an average 3 million downloads a month, said Bilal and Millings. It’s also developing a financial literacy curriculum for high schools.

CNBC interviewed the duo — who have been friends since childhood — to talk about personal finance and financial literacy in the U.S.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Greg Iacurci: You told CNBC last year that your “purpose is financial literacy and empowerment.” When it comes to financial literacy, what’s the No. 1 mistake you see people making with their finances?

Rashad Bilal: Not understanding the importance of investing, or [not] knowing how compound interest works.

For a long period of time, investing was something…