‘No one comes to the hood to talk about money’:...

Comedian and movie star Kevin Hart skipped the jokes in an appearance at an Oakland high school Friday and instead offered students a serious lesson on money and the mistakes he has made.

His appearance at Castlemont High School was part of the actor’s Hart of it All campaign to promote financial literacy.

His advice on investing in real estate, paying taxes, responsible borrowing and eschewing fancy cars and expensive watches was a surprising departure from his stand-up routines or roles in blockbuster films, students said.

But his life lessons started to sink in, they said, as Hart shared his financial failures, the result of growing up in a disadvantaged community in Philadelphia, not unlike the neighborhood surrounding the East Oakland high school.

“I’m a guy that came from the gutter,” he said. “The biggest disadvantage we have is not knowing. No one comes to the hood to talk about money.”

There are check-cashing stores and liquor stores.

“You don’t see banks,” Hart told the students. “They don’t expect you to make smart decisions.”

Hart described his upbringing by a single mother, with a father addicted to drugs. He worked in a shoe store before trying stand-up comedy and garnering some success. But by age 30, he said, he was deep in debt, owing taxes with nothing to show for his hard work.

“I never felt more stupid in my life,” he said. “I called myself Jack Ass Johnson.”

He vowed never to feel that way again, and learned about money, taxes and investments.

“Don’t be a last-minute figure-outer,” he added. “That’s what losers do.”

The assembly was sponsored by Chase Bank and the city’s Oakland Promise initiative, which is starting college funds for low-income children and providing scholarships and guidance for college-bound high school students, including those at Castlemont.

A community initiative launched in 2016, Oakland Promise includes $500 savings accounts for infants born to low-income parents, $100 college funds for city kindergarten students, and college counseling centers and financial support and mentoring for low-income students going to college.

The program also focuses on the financial literacy of parents and students, something research shows is often lacking among young people and rarely a significant part of a child’s education.

While California’s Department of Education offers guidelines and resources for financial literacy education, it is not required instruction.

Yet increasingly young people are facing financial stress, including college loan debt, which jumped to $1.4 trillion nationwide in 2017, up from $340 billion in 2001, according to a 2018 report by the Brookings Institution, a national research-focused nonprofit.

“Low financial literacy is correlated with a host of negative credit behaviors, including higher borrowing rates, mortgage delinquency, and home foreclosure,” according to the report. “These negative behaviors are particularly pronounced among young people: individuals age 18 to 34 pay more in interest on credit card debt and penalty fees than older adults, and are also twice as likely to take a hardship withdrawal from their retirement account or miss a mortgage payment.”

Hart’s visit was the first of two scheduled stops in Oakland, with Oakland High School also getting a surprise appearance from the actor.

At Castlemont, students roared at the celebrity guest, whistling, clapping and high-fiving each other as they stood to take pictures. They expected jokes and the funny man they had seen on the big screen. That isn’t what they got.

“I came here thinking this was like a comedy show,” said ninth-grader Sierra Taylor. “As he started talking I was like, this is some deep sh—.”

Senior Joshua Davis said he, too, was surprised by the serious side of Hart.

“It was very powerful, inspiring,” he said. “He gave me a different perspective of how to manage my money.”

Joshua noted that today is payday for his mentoring job and he said he’s going to follow Hart’s advice, to split his earnings, shoving half the money into an envelope to save for something important, something that doesn’t lose value.

“I feel like saving today,” he said.

The students need to learn the basic building blocks of financial well-being, said Mia Bonta, chief executive of Oakland Promise.

“Having someone like Kevin Hart, who kids know and can relate to — I think that’s what they respond to,” she said. “The reason he took this on is because he’s gone through enough of his own challenges.”

Before taking the stage, Hart told a Chronicle reporter that the biggest lesson he wanted to impart to students about his life was his personal experience “f—ing up.”

“I hate to use that language,” he said. “But there’s no better lesson than a f—-up.”

But that was just one of many pieces of advice he gave the auditorium full of Oakland teens.

Hart recommended buying real estate — to play a real-life game of Monopoly. To buy things that increase in value rather than things that lose value, such as watches or cars. He told the students to turn the knob and rattle the door when it’s slammed in their faces. And to dream, then work hard for it.

“The success that’s on the other side of hard work,” he said, “is the best sh— in the world.”

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@

sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jiltucker