For more than 10 years, Michelle taught financial planning to adults seeking to understand their retirement readiness and improve upon it. Yet after each seminar, one comment lingered: “I wish I knew this when I was young.” For the Honolulu entrepreneur, that simple truth sparked the question: What if the knowledge that shapes financial futures came earlier – before the debt, before the stress, before the second chances were needed?
Sitting around a conference table, Tucker and fellow 3D Wealth board members, Michael Coppes and Ron Baldwin, discussed the importance of the financial literacy program they established at the Shidler College of Business at UH Mānoa.
“We saw a real gap in how students learn about finances,” Tucker said. “We wanted to give them, not just business or economics lessons, but essential life skills for managing personal finances. They don’t have to be economists, but they should understand the economics of their decisions.”
The 3D Wealth and Financial Literacy Program equips students with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate complex financial landscapes, build economic stability and make informed personal and professional decisions.
At the heart of the initiative is a new online portal created in partnership with iGrad, an award-winning digital learning platform already used by hundreds of universities nationwide. The platform offers interactive courses and seminars on topics ranging from budgeting and student loans to money management and retirement planning.
Baldwin said this financial wellness effort is as much about empowerment as education. “Financial literacy means control,” he added. “It’s knowing the difference between having money and managing it.”
Coppes, who spent 15 years at the UH Foundation helping donors shape their legacies, sees this as an extension of that same mission. “It’s about teaching people to pay themselves first,” he said, recalling advice from his father. “That’s a simple idea, but it changes lives.”
Complementing this digital resource, a financial literacy help desk will be established on the second floor of the Walter Dods, Jr. RISE Center’s Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (PACE). Staffed by a graduate assistant, it will serve as a hands-on resource for students and community members seeking one-on-one support.
“We want the students to be engaged, and to be the end users and beneficiaries of this program,” said Summer Lee, a Shidler finance instructor who serves as the faculty lead for the iGrad program. “There is such a natural synergy between the students and PACE mentors.”
Dedicated to advancing financial literacy, 3D Wealth Advisors, Inc. envisions this educational initiative creating a ripple effect for generations, empowering families to better understand the economics of everyday life. Inspired by that vision, board members Tucker, Coppes and Baldwin have established an endowment to ensure the program’s enduring presence and long-term impact.
“It wasn’t enough to just roll something out,” Tucker said. “We wanted it to become part of the culture.”
The program is already embedding financial literacy across UH campuses – through workshops, student mentoring, presentations and online tools that guide users through real-world decisions like budgeting, saving and managing student loans. For Tucker, the goal is simple yet profound: to make understanding money as natural as learning to read or write.
“Money shouldn’t be a mystery,” she said. “Whether you make five dollars or $500,000, you need to know how to manage it. And if we teach students early, maybe one day we’ll stop hearing, ‘I wish I knew this when I was young.’”
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