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I'm not completely sold on the hype of financial literacy. Main reason being this: Most schools teach basic nutrition, i.e that eating less/more food than you

I'm not completely sold on the hype of financial literacy. Main reason being this: Most schools teach basic nutrition, i.e that eating less/more food than you need, can/will result in losing/gaining weight. In this day and age, it is common knowledge that eating junk and being sedentary will cause obesity. And even if there are groups of people that don't know this, obesity has hit all socioeconomic classes - not only poor people. Likewise, I don't think that if we suddenly teach everyone financial literacy, we're suddenly going to poverty plummeting. I don't think poor people are poor because they don't know how to pay their bills on time, invest in index funds, or that having a maxed out 35% credit card will make your debt outgrow a 8% savings fund. I think poor people are poor because they're trapped in low-wage jobs, and are often forced to use more expensive services, as well as being victims to centralization and ever-growing rents. edit: With that said, I think basic financial knowledge should be school curriculum - but I don't think it's going to be the magic bullet.

mettamage 5y ago
> I don't think poor people are poor because they don't know how to pay their bills on time, invest in index funds, or that having a maxed out 35% credit card will make your debt outgrow a 8% savings fund. I know people that don't know: * How to recover their bank accounts (they told me it's impossible, so I recovered it for them) * What an index fund is. Even when I do tell them, it seems to be a bunch of hocus pocus to them. * Ok, I don't know people with credit card trouble. Dutch people tend to not have credit cards. There are enough people that don't know a single thing about finance. Most of these people are 60+ and middle class. At least, that's what I have seen in my world of anecdata.
- TrackerFF 5y ago
  I see that - and I think it's quite a cultural thing. Most of the people I know in such positions, are also 60+ and have either retired, or on their path to retiring. Here in Norway most of the older folks either retired at 62 or 67, so being acutely aware of things like diverse investment portfolios, strategic credit card usage, etc. weren't really a thing. They'd get their pensions, and live normal lives.
  - allendoerfer 5y ago
    I am envious of the 250,000 $ every Norwegian has in his or her portfolio, properly diversified over the world economy with 0.16 % TER, just by the virtue of being born Norwegian.
    - oblio 5y ago
      I think most retired people in Europe just live off their state pensions.
kiba 5y ago
Likewise, I don't think that if we suddenly teach everyone financial literacy, we're suddenly going to poverty plummeting. I don't think poor people are poor because they don't know how to pay their bills on time, invest in index funds, or that having a maxed out 35% credit card will make your debt outgrow a 8% savings fund. Cause of being poor and in financial distress is multifactorial. Some of the problem can be blame on poor spending habits and lack of education.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
I disagree with your conclusion in relation to the points you presented: > I think poor people are poor because they're trapped in low-wage jobs, and are often forced to use more expensive services, as well as being victims to centralization and ever-growing rents That might be another issue, but in terms of what you have presented I think the issue is that knowing isn't enough, executing on the knowledge matters more. And most people can't execute, which is why people are still fat.
- TrackerFF 5y ago
  Wouldn't that kind of be the case for poor people too? I mean, even if you transferred all the knowledge of personal finance to them in an instant - investing or putting aside $0 is still going to yield the same result: $0. For many, it is impossible to execute such things, because they simply do not have any money to spend - nor do they have the chance to make more money, because they're already trapped with multiple jobs, children, and what not.
tdeck 5y ago
A further thing to consider is that this is an arm's race. As soon as enough people in a company's target demographic become aware of what to watch our for, companies will change their strategy or target market.
- tdeck 5y ago
  s/arm's/arms/. Autocorrect
kamaal 5y ago
Having access to facts, and acting on them are just two different things. In fact even having the motivation to act on knowledge isn't exactly covered in education. These are really issues related to larger character building of a person. They come from a different kind of education which is basically life experiences themselves. You really need some kind of journey for self discovery.
watwut 5y ago
> Most schools teach basic nutrition, i.e that eating less/more food than you need, can/will result in losing/gaining weight. That is not basic nutrition. We don't eat solely for calories and the composition of food affects how you feel and how you perform. Whether you are hungry and how much. Weight gain or loss is not the only parameter affected by food. Plus, kids don't have control over what they eat. Composition of school lunch is what they lunch. So maybe it is fully understandable that obesity goes up while we pat ourselves on backs.
pathseeker 5y ago
>Main reason being this: Most schools teach basic nutrition, i.e that eating less/more food than you need, can/will result in losing/gaining weight. In this day and age, it is common knowledge that eating junk and being sedentary will cause obesity. And even if there are groups of people that don't know this, obesity has hit all socioeconomic classes - not only poor people. They do teach what can lead to weight gain, but they've stopped putting emphasis on how unhealthy it was. In the 80-90s when I was in high-school we had our BMI measured in front of the rest of class. If you came in overweight the teach just stated matter-of-fact that you were overweight and that it could lead to health problems. That is absolutely unheard of today. Parents now complain if their child's doctor mentions that the child is overweight because of "body shaming". The reason obesity is a problem today is because convincing people to lose weight somehow became an attack on their identity.
- chownie 5y ago
  Please talk to real people rather than reading things online and taking them as fact. This is on the face of it a completely ridiculous claim to make. When you announce to an entire classroom that someone is overweight and unhealthy that person becomes defacto target for bullying and abuse, that's probably why this practice has disappeared. Doctors do still tell people that they are overweight, despite your wild assertion that they do not. I left highschool in the mid-2000s, I was told that I had high blood pressure for my age and to watch out for it. I had friends given advice to lose weight. I was given that same advice by doctors when I was gaining weight after having left school in the mid-2010's. A young relative who was overweight was given advice to lose weight by his doctor, his parents agreed and made some changes to his diet with his cooperation. Obesity correlates with a whole slew of different environmental, social and cultural variables, to reduce all of that complexity down to "we can't shame people into losing weight anymore" is absurd. Even worse, it's not even the first time I've come across this take, so I actually have a link to share with you. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4236245/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4236245/ Read at your leisure, it's not that long.

mettamage 5y ago

> I don't think poor people are poor because they don't know how to pay their bills on time, invest in index funds, or that having a maxed out 35% credit card will make your debt outgrow a 8% savings fund. I know people that don't know: * How to recover their bank accounts (they told me it's impossible, so I recovered it for them) * What an index fund is. Even when I do tell them, it seems to be a bunch of hocus pocus to them. * Ok, I don't know people with credit card trouble. Dutch people tend to not have credit cards. There are enough people that don't know a single thing about finance. Most of these people are 60+ and middle class. At least, that's what I have seen in my world of anecdata.

TrackerFF 5y ago
I see that - and I think it's quite a cultural thing. Most of the people I know in such positions, are also 60+ and have either retired, or on their path to retiring. Here in Norway most of the older folks either retired at 62 or 67, so being acutely aware of things like diverse investment portfolios, strategic credit card usage, etc. weren't really a thing. They'd get their pensions, and live normal lives.
- allendoerfer 5y ago
  I am envious of the 250,000 $ every Norwegian has in his or her portfolio, properly diversified over the world economy with 0.16 % TER, just by the virtue of being born Norwegian.
  - oblio 5y ago
    I think most retired people in Europe just live off their state pensions.

kiba 5y ago

Likewise, I don't think that if we suddenly teach everyone financial literacy, we're suddenly going to poverty plummeting. I don't think poor people are poor because they don't know how to pay their bills on time, invest in index funds, or that having a maxed out 35% credit card will make your debt outgrow a 8% savings fund. Cause of being poor and in financial distress is multifactorial. Some of the problem can be blame on poor spending habits and lack of education.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago

I disagree with your conclusion in relation to the points you presented: > I think poor people are poor because they're trapped in low-wage jobs, and are often forced to use more expensive services, as well as being victims to centralization and ever-growing rents That might be another issue, but in terms of what you have presented I think the issue is that knowing isn't enough, executing on the knowledge matters more. And most people can't execute, which is why people are still fat.

TrackerFF 5y ago
Wouldn't that kind of be the case for poor people too? I mean, even if you transferred all the knowledge of personal finance to them in an instant - investing or putting aside $0 is still going to yield the same result: $0. For many, it is impossible to execute such things, because they simply do not have any money to spend - nor do they have the chance to make more money, because they're already trapped with multiple jobs, children, and what not.

tdeck 5y ago

A further thing to consider is that this is an arm's race. As soon as enough people in a company's target demographic become aware of what to watch our for, companies will change their strategy or target market.

tdeck 5y ago
s/arm's/arms/. Autocorrect

kamaal 5y ago

Having access to facts, and acting on them are just two different things. In fact even having the motivation to act on knowledge isn't exactly covered in education. These are really issues related to larger character building of a person. They come from a different kind of education which is basically life experiences themselves. You really need some kind of journey for self discovery.

watwut 5y ago

> Most schools teach basic nutrition, i.e that eating less/more food than you need, can/will result in losing/gaining weight. That is not basic nutrition. We don't eat solely for calories and the composition of food affects how you feel and how you perform. Whether you are hungry and how much. Weight gain or loss is not the only parameter affected by food. Plus, kids don't have control over what they eat. Composition of school lunch is what they lunch. So maybe it is fully understandable that obesity goes up while we pat ourselves on backs.

pathseeker 5y ago

>Main reason being this: Most schools teach basic nutrition, i.e that eating less/more food than you need, can/will result in losing/gaining weight. In this day and age, it is common knowledge that eating junk and being sedentary will cause obesity. And even if there are groups of people that don't know this, obesity has hit all socioeconomic classes - not only poor people. They do teach what can lead to weight gain, but they've stopped putting emphasis on how unhealthy it was. In the 80-90s when I was in high-school we had our BMI measured in front of the rest of class. If you came in overweight the teach just stated matter-of-fact that you were overweight and that it could lead to health problems. That is absolutely unheard of today. Parents now complain if their child's doctor mentions that the child is overweight because of "body shaming". The reason obesity is a problem today is because convincing people to lose weight somehow became an attack on their identity.

chownie 5y ago
Please talk to real people rather than reading things online and taking them as fact. This is on the face of it a completely ridiculous claim to make. When you announce to an entire classroom that someone is overweight and unhealthy that person becomes defacto target for bullying and abuse, that's probably why this practice has disappeared. Doctors do still tell people that they are overweight, despite your wild assertion that they do not. I left highschool in the mid-2000s, I was told that I had high blood pressure for my age and to watch out for it. I had friends given advice to lose weight. I was given that same advice by doctors when I was gaining weight after having left school in the mid-2010's. A young relative who was overweight was given advice to lose weight by his doctor, his parents agreed and made some changes to his diet with his cooperation. Obesity correlates with a whole slew of different environmental, social and cultural variables, to reduce all of that complexity down to "we can't shame people into losing weight anymore" is absurd. Even worse, it's not even the first time I've come across this take, so I actually have a link to share with you. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4236245/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4236245/ Read at your leisure, it's not that long.