The study of the financial and economic culture of the population is designed to help explain and predict its behavior, the ability to take advantage and avoid risks. The article presents the results of a study of the financial and economic culture of students. The theoretical premises were the approach to culture as a socially interactive process consisting of "shared meanings" and "shared practices", and the methodological framework was the concept of the institutional matrix and the phenomenon of financial subjectivity. The socio-economic block of issues considered in the article includes indicators characterizing risks of a macroeconomic nature and in interaction with financial institutions. Macroeconomic risks seem to many respondents to be very likely, which determines the orientation towards using such methods of saving and multiplying funds as investments in real estate, cash foreign currency and bank deposit. At the same time, for the formation of a future pension, students prefer cash (currency and rubles) and long-term securities (without specifying issuers and stock exchanges), while classical pension insurance options are the least popular. This is quite consistent with the assumption of a skeptical attitude towards long-term interaction with the Russian financial system, which will determine the economic behavior of graduates in the first years after graduation and is likely to continue in the future.