As someone who did extremely poorly in math at school until I found practical applications of it in programming I can tell you that for a part of the population

As someone who did extremely poorly in math at school until I found practical applications of it in programming I can tell you that for a part of the population (probably a large part considering how many other people don’t do well in math) it helps a lot to see how it applies to the real world and it provides more motivation to pursue the topic. Money is something everyone can relate to and it makes a lot of basic mathematical concepts much more concrete. Without looking it up I’d bet a lot of early development in mathematics was motivated by its application to money and management of quantities of goods, why shy away from history that makes the topic more interesting and relatable?