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I see what you're saying, and I didn't learn a lot of those specifics in school either (or actually I'm pretty sure I leaned some of them but have forgotten and

I see what you're saying, and I didn't learn a lot of those specifics in school either (or actually I'm pretty sure I leaned some of them but have forgotten and had to learn again, which is basically my larger point). I'm not sure that I agree that we should be dedicating time in school to things as specific as what you listed (but maybe I could be convinced!). It seems to me that the few kids that would actually pay enough attention to a class like that to remember anything 3-5 years later when they have to start using it would find that much of it had become obselete (like your balancing check book example.) Almost everything you listed about credit cards is written in the forms you have to sign to get one anyway, if people aren't reading that I doubt a class from years earlier will help. I do remember the first time I considered buying stocks that I literally had no idea how to do it. Like - who do I give my money to in exchange for a piece of a company? Absolutely no idea. I feel like the Internet has pretty much solved that problem though.

jwagenet 9y ago
We should absolutely be dedicating time to personal finance while kids are in school. I especially think a personal finance class would be much more useful as a junior or senior math requirement than stats, trig, or calc in under-served communities where financial skills would be most valuable. Yes, maybe it doesn't make sense to be begin committing serious time to any topics more complicated than saving and spending management until kids are old enough to get jobs. But to argue the topic is too boring for kids to pay attention is pretty lame considering many of my peers in highschool were pretty disinterested in the whole thing to begin with. At the very least, a reintroduction of the topics every year or so would provide kids with some recognition of the topics and a more structured curriculum requiring students to track (preferably) real expenses and create budgets would probably go a long way.

jwagenet 9y ago

We should absolutely be dedicating time to personal finance while kids are in school. I especially think a personal finance class would be much more useful as a junior or senior math requirement than stats, trig, or calc in under-served communities where financial skills would be most valuable. Yes, maybe it doesn't make sense to be begin committing serious time to any topics more complicated than saving and spending management until kids are old enough to get jobs. But to argue the topic is too boring for kids to pay attention is pretty lame considering many of my peers in highschool were pretty disinterested in the whole thing to begin with. At the very least, a reintroduction of the topics every year or so would provide kids with some recognition of the topics and a more structured curriculum requiring students to track (preferably) real expenses and create budgets would probably go a long way.