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2026 Ambassador
Global ambassador

Devin Acar

Researching why financial confidence — not knowledge — is what makes money actually work.

Devin is from Montvale, New Jersey, and a research assistant at Ramapo College. He spent 10 months running OLS regressions across 107,312 respondents from the FINRA National Financial Capability Study and found that financial attitude predicts financial well-being roughly seven times more strongly than financial knowledge. He is Chief Outreach Officer at FLY to the World (Anthem Award winner, 13 global chapters, 800 students), founder of InnovationsForEquality, which has built free AI-powered websites for 100+ small businesses, and Co-CEO of Educ8tors, an AI-powered tutoring program serving 515 students.

Devin Acar, 2026 FinMango Global Ambassador
Devin AcarCohort of 2026
USA
Current Ambassador
Montvale, NJ
On financial health
"Financial health, to me, is what exists when someone's relationship with money is actually working — proven through actions, not just knowledge. The people I've worked with who struggled almost never lacked capability. They lacked confidence, and they lacked habits that stuck."
— Devin Acar, on what financial health means to them
In their own words
01

Why this work matters to me

A parent sat in on a session I ran at a middle school in Bergen County. At the end she pulled me aside and said she'd been told her whole life to save more, but nobody had ever explained why she kept spending when money got tight. I didn't have a clean answer for her that day — and it's the reason I spent 10 months on a research study instead of just accepting that financial literacy programs work. The thing that keeps happening: people already know what they're supposed to do. So the sessions that actually move something are the ones that address how someone feels about money first.

02

The biggest barrier I see

Bergen County has one of the highest median incomes in New Jersey. It also has Hackensack, Garfield, and Lodi, where the financial reality looks nothing like the county average. A student from Montvale and one from Hackensack can go to school five miles apart and have completely different relationships with money by 18. Access to financial socialization runs through family networks — if your family doesn't have it, nobody hands it to you.

Their plan as ambassador

I'm building a financial literacy platform around simulation — not quizzes, not pamphlets. You get put inside a scenario: a layoff, a medical bill that wipes your savings, a rent increase you didn't see coming. You make decisions and see what happens, then you go again. The goal is to build financial attitude and behavior before the stakes are real, because those are the two things my research found actually predict financial well-being. As an ambassador I'd pilot this directly with college students and youth — especially first-generation students making financial decisions for the first time without a support system behind them.

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