Americans for the most part are financially ignorant. They not only don’t know the fundamentals of money, they don’t know what they don’t know.
The basic on financial matters should be taught in the home and failing that in schools. I would think the freshman year in High Schools should have one class on Home Economics (not cooking but money).
When I was in high school they had business math but it was basically for the dummies. No one who was on a college track ever took it. I’ve never used algebra or geometry, all right not never, but I sure could have used some of that information, I had to learn it all on my own.
One of the biggest problems is financing lifestyle with debt. Most of the people I know don’t carry a balance on n their credit cards, but oddly enough some in the same general circumstances do. In one case the guy and his wife seemed to have no fiscal sense at all. He made six figure salary and was frequently complaining about being broke. However, it turned out that poor spending decisions were their family values. Example 1. Expensive vacations- went on a two week vacation to Hawaii with wife and 2 kids. Put it on the plastic. Example 2. Car buying. His older car became increasingly more expensive to fix so he decided to replace it with a newer but still used car. OK decision so far, BUT after he left the dealer he had two almost identical used cars because “his wife didn’t like him getting a “new” car when she didn’t.” Example 3. Sending both kids to expensive private school. Where he lived the public schools weren’t the war zones that they are in black Democrat dominated parts of GA. When he occasionally tried to rein in expenses wifey would double down. He realized what they were doing was not in their best interest, but wasn’t sure what to do about it, but from what I heard the wife didn’t really care. Both needed to sit down with a financial advisor but didn’t want to.