Too many people think about finances only in the short term: how much money do I have today and what can I spend it on? Better personal finance education should include illustrations of long-term effective decision-making. For example, if I save $5 a day, every day, how much extra money will I have at the end of the year? At the end of the decade?
The consequences of leaving these topics untouched in school and in a person’s childhood can be devastating.
Taking on debt early in your life can hinder your potential growth. With college debt or credit card debt, you may find it nearly impossible to establish a strong financial foundation for yourself — and that debt may only grow worse over time.
Millions of people forge a path to their own retirement through hard work, strict budgeting, and investment; even on a modest salary, an individual can push to retire early. But with no personal finance skills, that’s a practical impossibility.
Personal finance is now a mandatory course for graduating high school in Virginia. As in no pass, no diploma.
Shush!
The creators and managers of The Fed, government officials and pubic skool teachers are quite happy with Americans’ financial ignorance.
Math is RACIST
When public school officials get salaries higher than most people and pensions to not have to worry about retirement (at least they think they don’t — inflation can be a downer, man), they think personal finance isn’t a necessary skill and project that onto the kids’ futures.
I’ve screamed for decades that education fails us by not educating people about personal finance and investing. It’s why so few build wealth and so many needlessly suffer economically.
But I’m not getting on a school board.
Mark Twain: “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
There was, oh, in 1964, such a thing called ‘the business curriculum’. It was on par with ‘collegiate studies’. (This was junior high school.)
That curriculum, followed in high school, prepared me for working in business. Obviously, this was all before hand-held calculators. I learned most of those things mentioned in the article.
All these years, even with the change to computers.
And it started with learning what a checkbook, and a zavings account were.
What used to be a ‘blonde joke’ has become reality, i
e., “How could I be out of money??!! I still have checks left!”
The problem with institutions teaching personal finance is that much like everything else being taught, it’s rife with incompetent to outright false teachings. If they won’t teach Reading, Writing, and ‘rithmetic correctly, they won’t teach personal finance either.
Give kids Dave Ramsey books.
Personal financing is racist and part of white patriarchal supremacy. Decolonize racist math.
Although it’s way out of date I’ve found Microsoft Money to be very,very useful in many ways.It only works on PCs but Mac users have access to Quicken...which does pretty much the same thing.
That’s because most people do not have the cognitive capacity to learn it.
Marrying the wrong woman can bankrupt you, too.