Acharya Prashant addresses the topic of financial literacy by stating that the current generation is already more financially literate than any of the previous ones. He posits that the more significant issue is not about finance, but about values. It is one thing to know the various ways to finance a purchase, but it is an entirely different and more crucial matter to determine if the thing is worth buying at all. This, he says, is where the current generation falters. They may know a bit of finance, but they do not know the value of anything. He elaborates on this by distinguishing between price and value. To him, finance is about knowing the price and managing the price, while life is about realizing the value. He emphasizes that price and value rarely go together. The current generation has an eye for price but lacks an appreciation for value. The result, he explains, is that people make very solid and smart financial decisions about buying "worthless crap." He illustrates this with the example of someone who cracks a great deal to buy something useless; the deal itself is wonderful, but what is brought home remains crap. Acharya Prashant further discusses the long-term consequences of this misplaced focus. People use online tools to meticulously plan their finances for retirement, aiming to build a large corpus by a certain age, yet they do not know what to do with their life either before or after retirement. He argues that one cannot know what retirement means without first knowing what work means, and if work is truly meaningful, it would never allow one to retire. He asserts that without answering the fundamental question of what to devote one's life to, all other questions and answers, including financial ones, are purely worthless. In conclusion, he contrasts financial literacy with value literacy. Financial management can determine the most cost-effective way to acquire a car, but value education questions the very desire for the car, which might stem from social comparison or other superficial reasons. Value education is about understanding who you are and why you value a certain object. Once an object is determined to be truly valuable, then financial management can be applied. Without a sense of values, one can be financially very smart and yet a "huge idiot." He points out that the major financial crises of this century were caused by top-end, highly intelligent finance professionals who lacked values.