Should personal finances be taught in public school?

[Zebo]

Absolutely should be taught. It could be part of a basic accounting course perhaps? My mom started showing me how to budget/do taxes when I was in the 3rd grade I think. I'm much better for it today. I can't believe that at 28 I'd say about 50% of my peers still have no clue how to budget.

Dad was a CPA who owned a lighting company, a big one - made all tritium exit signs for tanks and other government stuff. Started with nothing and an immigrant. We were taught since we could walk about finances. I can still hear it... "I came here with $90" etc etc etc

 

[Wyndru]

We have a personal finance class for our seniors. They also hit subjects such as mortgages and refinancing, insurance, etc...

If it stops them from going ape shit with the credit cards right out of hs, I guess it's good.

 

[shiner]

Yes. I'm god damned tired of going into a store and the dumbshit behind the counter being incapable of making change. It isn't that hard you lunkhead.....pull your head out of your ass...I mean shit...the fucking machine tells you what you need to pay back yet you still stand there like a retarded monkey looking at a diagram of the space shuttle or a nuclear reactor or the fucking US tax code or something. It is change...figure it out and give it to me because I have better things to do than look at your confused pimply face. Asshole!

 

[JS80]

I think it's a waste of time. I don't think it will generate more financially responsible people. You cannot change human nature. Trust me on this.

 

[Crono]

I think it's a waste of time. I don't think it will generate more financially responsible people. You cannot change human nature. Trust me on this.

Financial education isn't about changing people, it's about providing the knowledge and tools for responsible people earlier on. It's preparation, not a guarantee of financial responsibility.

It's the same with all public education. No one expects physicists, doctors, and engineers to be 100% of every graduating class.

 

[Zebo]

Should definitively have one book be required reading like PC MC "native son" was and such. I'd go for Millionaire Next door and give synopsis in a paper like so much of the irrelevant trash we had to in HS to appease liberal arts teachers/curriculum.

Who knows though... maybe today kids don't even write papers too hard for teachers and students...everything multiple choices. Same principle though.

 

[classy]

Yes. I think that would be an excellent idea. Make better consumers and you have a better society and economy.

 

[classy]

I think it's a waste of time. I don't think it will generate more financially responsible people. You cannot change human nature. Trust me on this.

Yea I know what you mean

 

[dfuze]

It's worth a shot, I don't see why not. While metals class was fun, I think a class like this would be more productive.

 

[jiggahertz]

Yeah, I think it should be taught. I mean, it has more applicability than home-ec or shop for most people. They should also teach common sense too. Now I don't think it would help everyone, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt trying.

 

[zinfamous]

yes

 

[Chaotic42]

Yes. I had a class on this in 7th grade. Well, we ran businesses and had to worry about keeping them profitable, writing checks, balancing budgets, etc.

Anyway, yes, *hammer* mathematics, personal finance, literature, and languages into kids.

 

[Bignate603]

Yes. I'm god damned tired of going into a store and the dumbshit behind the counter being incapable of making change. It isn't that hard you lunkhead.....pull your head out of your ass...I mean shit...the fucking machine tells you what you need to pay back yet you still stand there like a retarded monkey looking at a diagram of the space shuttle or a nuclear reactor or the fucking US tax code or something. It is change...figure it out and give it to me because I have better things to do than look at your confused pimply face. Asshole!

Yeah, that's not really what we're talking about. That's just an inability to do simple math, not personal finance.


My old highschool has added it onto the economics course that everyone takes. There's a whole section on credit cards, loans, and budgets. My father is on the school board now and pushed for that to be added because he was tired of kids getting out of school without having a clue how to manage money.

 

[Fenixgoon]

I absolutely agree. Things like how compounded interest works, and how to figure it out, etc are unknown to probably 95 percent of Americans.

It's not something that falls into the realm of parental responsibility. That's what schools are for. In fact, relying on the parents to teach such things is absurd.

I posted on this awhile back. Even the correct way to keep a check register is unknown to many people. At my junior high school they had an "experimental" class to teach things like this. To this day I marvel at how people can't fill out a check properly.

btw they also taught keyboarding, how to calculate nutritional values of food, etc.

I always wondered why this stuff never caught on as required classes.

btw I also think that basic disease education should be taught. Things like the difference between viral and bacterial infections, etc. I always thought that first aid should be required learning.

i haven't the slightest idea how to balance a checkbook. then again, i hardly ever write checks. and when i do, i know exactly how much money i have in my bank account, how much will be left, etc.

i keep a good eye on my bank accounts. i don't itemize all my spending each month, but i make damn sure that i'm saving up a solid amount of money.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Yes. I'm god damned tired of going into a store and the dumbshit behind the counter being incapable of making change. It isn't that hard you lunkhead.....pull your head out of your ass...I mean shit...the fucking machine tells you what you need to pay back yet you still stand there like a retarded monkey looking at a diagram of the space shuttle or a nuclear reactor or the fucking US tax code or something. It is change...figure it out and give it to me because I have better things to do than look at your confused pimply face. Asshole!

For the last time, making change has NOTHING to do with math. It is a skill that many do not have. It is NOT related to intelligence. I can train most anyone to be reasonably competent but, there is nothing that can be done to teach cashiers how to deal with the unexpected if they do not have the skill.

I recommend teaching estimation to all kids in HS. Most people have trouble with conversions outside their daily routine. However, that is a skill like counting money so, I suspect it would be futile.

 

[Skillet49]

Budgeting/finance stuff was included in the economics course in my hs. I can't say I really learned anything new from it, mostly because my parents taught me how to budget/save from an early age. Yay for being debt free!

 

[Turin39789]

I've railed on this many times. On the one hand part of me doesn't think it's the responsibility of public schools to teach extremely necessary life skills and the parents need to be doing it, but at the same time people just aren't teaching such skills at home because they just don't have them. I was watching a local school board meeting and a parent was bitching about how her kid doesn't know how to address an envelope and how that's the school's fault (seriously?).

If I had to make a decision I'd go with teaching basic principles of personal finance in school. Cover the need for savings, what debt really costs, the impact of compound interest (on savings, and debt), when it's a good idea to get a loan, when it's not, etc.

We learned personal finance when I was in high school in Jefferson County.

We also went over how to write letters, personal and business and how to address envelopes in middle school.

 

[Kreon]

I've had three classes that have dealt with personal finance in some way.

In middle school in Home Economics we did a bunch of personal finance stuff. Simple budgets, getting the point that income>expenses is good.

In high school we had economics. Half of it was personal finance (budgets for the duration of the class, CC stuff, how credit ratings work, and how interest is calculated), the other half being about macro-economics and investing.

I also had a section about finance in my "intro to college" class. It was a joke, barely on the level of the one I had in middle school.

While I didn't really get much out of them (I was taught at home), there were some kids who did get something out of all of them. Unfortunately, there were more who didn't understand even basic things. They didn't learn anything from the two they had to take.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Right after the course on how to judge your neighbor.

 

[Chaotic42]

Right after the course on how to judge your neighbor.

I don't get it.

 

[RPD]

I'd like to see this, much better then say the ceramics class I took in HS.

 

[Binarycow]

This is a bad idea. If the mass starts to gain personal financial knowledge they just might decide to opt out of this (basically) Ponzi's scheme that we call our economy. Then we can all no longer afford to have what we cannot actually afford have to begin with by charging it forward.