[HN Gopher] Rhode island makes financial literacy classes requir...
___________________________________________________________________
Rhode island makes financial literacy classes required for high
school students
Author : gmays
Score : 165 points
Date : 2021-06-21 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (themorningnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (themorningnews.com)
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Great move.
|
| It's always been one of my pet peeves that basic personal finance
| classes weren't taught more in schools. Some of the biggest
| financial decisions in a person's life comes right as high-school
| is ending. Not everybody is going to become rich, but at least
| give people the tools they need to maximize their gifts. The
| system feels intentionally designed to leave them ignorant, allow
| them to make dumb decisions, and extract wealth from kids for
| decades from that.
|
| Also, I doubt we'll ever see this as a basic public school
| requirement, but I'd love to see risk-management explicitly
| taught as part of that. To me, this guides so much of what smart
| decision makers do in life and would be wise for everybody to be
| a little familiar with.
| eesmith wrote:
| The bill says "Thirty-six (36) states guarantee access to
| personal finance education in their public." -
| http://webserver.rilegislature.gov/billtext20/housetext20/h7... .
| I wonder how that's helped those other states.
|
| My personal opinion is that the system is set up to screw people
| out of their money, with the push for (expensive, self-funded)
| college education instead of on-the-job training or government-
| funded college education, the low minimum wage, especially for
| employees in tipped positions, the nerfing of union power, the
| high cost of a privatized health system, the difficulties of
| switching jobs due to employer-funded medical insurance, the lack
| of funding and political support things like the Consumer
| Financial Protection Bureau, high banking costs, and so on.
|
| Do these personal finance classes teach about these systemic
| issues? Or do they imply that the student is responsible for a
| system weighted against them?
|
| I wonder what part of the existing school curricula will be
| removed in order to have the time for this class.
| deepserket wrote:
| The thing that i don't understand is how can people that live in
| the USA accumulate so much debt?
|
| As a 24yo European I never had more than 5k EUR of debt at any
| point in my life.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The thing that i don't understand is how can people that live
| in the USA accumulate so much debt?
|
| Drowning people in debt is kind of what American society is
| optimized for.
|
| > As a 24yo European I never had more than 5k EUR of debt at
| any point in my life.
|
| Europe is...not America.
|
| "The average loan debt for a bachelor's degree among the class
| of 2019 was $28,950." [0]
|
| [0] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-
| loans/whats...
| wmf wrote:
| Maybe your government provides more/better services...
| alistairSH wrote:
| College costs money. If your parents aren't upper-middle-class,
| that means borrowing money.
|
| Then you show up at college, and on your way to class on day 1,
| you are accosted by various banks handing out credit cards (or
| at least this was the case in the late-90s when I was at UVA).
|
| Then, you finish college, and because real wages haven't
| changed in 40 years, you borrow more money to pay rent, pay
| back student loans, etc.
|
| Americans have an unhealthy relationship with consumerism and
| credit. Doesn't help that credit is currently cheap, so buy-
| now, pay-later is the norm.
|
| It's completely crazy, no disagreement. But, it's been this way
| for decades.
| mkmk wrote:
| You'll be happy to learn that the CARD act of 2009 limited
| credit card companies' marketing activities on college
| campuses.
| kart23 wrote:
| what does it specifically say? I remember seeing prominent
| BofA and some other bank's booth at my college's welcome
| week in 2017, and a decent number of people crowded around.
| Felt very scummy.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Looks like the Act prevented the extension of credit to
| students >21yo and banned the handing out of food/gifts.
| But, didn't outright prevent banks from setting up tables
| to push their services.
|
| From Wikipedia... _Eliminates excessive marketing to
| young adults. Consumers under the age of 21 must prove
| that they have an independent income or get a co-signer
| before applying for a credit card. The Act also prevents
| credit card companies from mailing offers to consumers
| under 21 unless they "opt in," and prohibits companies
| from wooing students with T-shirts, free pizza and other
| free gifts at university-sponsored events._
| mkmk wrote:
| Wikipedia claims: "Eliminates excessive marketing to
| young adults. Consumers under the age of 21 must prove
| that they have an independent income or get a co-signer
| before applying for a credit card. The Act also prevents
| credit card companies from mailing offers to consumers
| under 21 unless they "opt in," and prohibits companies
| from wooing students with T-shirts, free pizza and other
| free gifts at university-sponsored events."
|
| Not sure how much companies toe the line/what was going
| on at the event you saw.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Good to know! When I was in school, they'd camp out for the
| day near the student section in the football stadium and
| hand out free stuff to anybody who took a card. Free gifts
| and big credit lines to drunk 19 year olds - bonkers.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I'd categorize debt into 4 categories:
|
| * Student debt. University costs a fuckton of money in the US,
| and you can pretty much find some way to cover it in debt. For
| young people this is probably the #1 category of debt.
|
| * Mortgages. Basically, of all the debts, mortgages are the
| ones that don't really "count," since it's generally acquired
| for the purpose of specifically obtaining an asset and its
| bottom line on your net worth is going to be around 0. Also,
| there's some tax advantages to mortgages, so it's not really an
| issue to have mortgage debt.
|
| * Medical debt. Yeah, this sucks.
|
| * Personal debt, primarily credit card debt. Credit card debt
| is something that is likely to really screw financially
| literate people over: it tends to be very high interest, it
| tends to be marketed heavily to suggest that you're not being
| screwed by high interest (e.g., cash-back rewards!). The
| minimum payments are pretty low, so it's pretty easy to cut
| back on paying the card if finances are tight, without
| realizing just how much you're being screwed by the interest.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Auto debt has ballooned in recent years. Seems like lots of
| people are buying more car than they need because it is "only
| $x more per month".
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/american-
| debt-...
| jcranmer wrote:
| Auto debt is kind of a halfway between mortgage debt and
| personal debt. Like mortgages, you're acquiring a long-
| lived asset for the debt. However, autos famously have a
| very steep initial depreciation that makes me suspect that
| many people with auto loans are underwater--and an
| underwater auto loan is going to be like credit card debt
| in that it's buying more than you can afford.
|
| I vacillated as to whether or not to include it as a
| separate category, but ultimately I think it's reasonable
| to consider them as personal debt insofar as they
| contribute to a debt epidemic.
| mynameishere wrote:
| Probably because you are 24yo rather than from a particular
| continent
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yeah, the whole "as a European why is America so bad as X"
| gets especially funny in cases like this. As your link shows,
| the top 10 countries with the highest household debt to gdp
| ratio are mostly European. The US isn't doing great but it's
| not like Switzerland is hell hole so maybe it's not
| especially bad to have a higher household debt in the first
| place anyways. The European countries with lower household
| debt seem to have a higher public debt anyways. And to go a
| bit off topic here, I'm not American but it's very weird to
| see the almost alternative reality about how life actually is
| in (yes even western) Europe on the internet when it's much
| more bleak in real life. It's okay to be super critical of
| the US and it's issues but it's mind blowing to me that
| Europe is seen as an overall superior & a model of what
| should be done when it absolutely shouldn't be.
|
| (And that's not even touching how much more stressful debt is
| in some parts of europe. In the US the bankruptcy courts and
| laws make it so much easier to bounce back after a going
| bankrupt, whereas it can be a completely life shattering
| experience in the old continent. Unless things changed
| recently)
| julienchastang wrote:
| Do Europeans not go into debt (tens to perhaps hundreds of
| thousands of EURs) to purchase a home, for example?
| [deleted]
| mattkrause wrote:
| Perhaps less so for education, medical care, a car, etc.
| bwb wrote:
| Credit cards are also easy to get... I had around 22k to 30k in
| credit card debt by the end of my senior year. Part of that was
| building a business, but part was bootstrapping a business
| while living minimally... I learned a lot from that exp and in
| the end it worked out, but the ease to which I got those cards
| should terrify most people.
|
| My parents helped me with school a little bit, and I was before
| the recent increases, so I think I graduated with maybe 25k in
| debt for 5 years of college. I paid it off quick as I had an
| amazing job out of college and sold the business I built.
|
| I've watched my sister who is 13 years younger have a lot more
| debt and facing a really long march to pay it off. It is doable
| as she has a masters in a great field with great pay, but it is
| still a many year process...
| pwg wrote:
| Because it is, unfortunately, far too easy to obtain credit in
| the US (unless one puts a 'freeze' on one's credit reports, one
| gets about 1-2 offers for new credit cards in the mail daily).
|
| Additionally, credit cards are a way of buying things where the
| actual cost is wholly disconnected from the purchasing
| activity.
|
| Purchasing something for $1 using a credit card feels (and
| acts) identically to purchasing something for $2000 using a
| credit card. The only difference is the size of the number
| being added to the balance, so buying "more than one can
| actually afford" via credit cards is far too easy, because for
| many it does not feel like "spending". I.e., there's no
| "physicality" of having to count out cash bills and seeing the
| pile grow.
|
| As well, credit card payback rates as calculated by the banks
| are structured such that the principal is paid down as slowly
| as legally allowed, which naturally increases the banks profits
| at the detriment of the individual paying the bill (as most of
| the payment goes to interest, not principal, if paying the
| "minimum payment" calculated by the holding bank).
|
| So it is simply very easy to obtain plural credit cards, and to
| use them to fuel an instant gratification lifestyle well beyond
| ones means without considering the consequences of loading up
| 20k or 30k or more onto credit cards on a take home salary of
| 2-3k/month.
|
| And, once someone has gotten themselves dug into this deep pit
| of debt, it is extremely difficult to climb up out of the hole.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I knew multiple people who graduated college with over $10k of
| revolving (credit card) debt at over 20% APR!
|
| It is dreadfully easy to get lines of credit as a college
| student, and the banks specifically target students because
| they are a good combination of financially naive and likely to
| have high future earnings potential. My first week on campus I
| was handed over a dozen credit card applications.
| jerf wrote:
| Interest rates being held so low for so long disadvantages the
| working class. It may look like you're paying fixed "prices"
| for things, but that's just a cover over what always comes down
| to a bidding scheme. Sometimes that's even directly visible,
| like when buying a home. Since borrowing money is so cheap. you
| end up in bidding competition with people who took out the
| cheap loans, meaning you either have to come up with more money
| yourself through other means, or compete with them by taking
| out loans yourself. The worse off you are, the more likely you
| are to end up doing the latter.
|
| The end result is the entire working class is enmeshed in debt
| all the time just to stay even with where they would have been
| if the interest rates weren't so low.
|
| It's astonishing how effective the upper class was at coming up
| with this policy to endebtify the entire middle and lower class
| without ever once talking with each other about how to do this
| or coordinating any actions to produce this result. It just
| sorta happened. Neat for them.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Low interest rate are not the problem here.
|
| Household debt is overwhelmingly about home ownership, first
| of all which affects richer working people. Housing prices
| mainly have to do with housing scarcity in good areas, which
| is a density problem.
|
| Workers have been getting fucked, but blaming interest rates
| is simplistic and counterproductive as the ability to do more
| fiscal stimulus as aided by low interest rates would be in
| their favor.
| jerf wrote:
| I'm not presenting this as the answer to why home ownership
| is screwed up. I'm presenting this as a significant part of
| the answer to why everyone is so indebted in general. With
| debt so "cheap", anything you are competing with other
| people for, which is basically everything in the end, you
| are competing with people who took "cheap" debt. When the
| path is greased, at scale it will be taken.
|
| Stimulus, incidentally, has much the same problem. Yeah,
| great, everyone gets $3000 or whatever, but now you're just
| in competition with other people who just got $3000. It's
| not a complete loss, of course, but people advocating for
| it always want to talk about the benefits in pre-stimulus
| currency, but people spend it in post-stimulus currency.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Low interest rate are not the problem here.
|
| No, but they are definitely A problem.
|
| Housing prices in a given market vary inversely with
| interest rates. Sure, scarcity has an effect which is why I
| said "in a given market". When someone goes to a bank
| looking for a home load, the first thing they are is what
| your income and expenses are. From there, they figure out
| how high your monthly payment can be, and from there using
| the current interest rates they calculate how much you can
| borrow. Everyone - sellers, agents, banks - pressure you to
| spend as much as possible, and one average they succeed.
| That means lower interest rates will enable you to pay more
| at the same monthly payment. In other words, the buyer will
| have roughly the same monthly payment regardless of
| interest rates. Those rates will determine how much money
| goes to the seller vs the bank over 15 or 30 years.
|
| Low interest rates cause artificially high prices which
| don't benefit society, just the sellers. They also lead to
| banks not paying interest on savings, which discourages
| savings. They also encourage all sorts of high prices. The
| current cost of a college degree is due to government
| guarantees on student loans, which largely didn't exist
| when I got mine (at a much lower price even adjusted for
| inflation).
|
| And finally, something I think is true but haven't worked
| out all the math. It's not lower interest rates that
| stimulate the economy, but the act of lowering them. If we
| were at a steady state, reducing rates by a fixed amount
| and keeping things steady should produce a short-term
| (perhaps a few years long) spike in GDP, after which things
| will return to an equilibrium possibly lower than before
| the rate decrease (or the same or slightly higher I don't
| know) but less than the short term bump. The opposite is
| also true, raising rates will cause problems so much be
| done very slowly. The Fed has the US economy backed into a
| corner of sorts. The only way out seems to be to ignite a
| lot of inflation and raise rates slowly so as not to cause
| another collapse like 2007 (which was triggered by an
| abrupt rate increase).
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| So first of all I think home-ownership is bullshit for
| other reasons. So I don't really want to defend it.
|
| > In other words, the buyer will have roughly the same
| monthly payment regardless of interest rates. Those rates
| will determine how much money goes to the seller vs the
| bank over 15 or 30 years.
|
| Yes
|
| > Low interest rates cause artificially high prices which
| don't benefit society, just the sellers.
|
| Private ownership of land is a racket, yes, but you as
| you just said the mortgage payment should be the same as
| effects bank vs seller's cut. The payment structure
| matters more than the total price.
|
| > They also lead to banks not paying interest on savings,
| which discourages savings.
|
| Was there every a time when working class savings
| amounted to something in aggregate? I suspect the whole
| "the holloi polloi needs to learn to be frugal" has been
| all moralization not economics for quite some time.
|
| > The current cost of a college degree is due to
| government guarantees on student loans, which largely
| didn't exist when I got mine (at a much lower price even
| adjusted for inflation).
|
| The problem here isn't rates, but the moronic guarantee
| without strings attached. This is classic privatization
| -> regulatory capture. The government should just fund
| public schools and private schools can go fend for
| themselves.
|
| > And finally, something I think is true but haven't
| worked out all the math. It's not lower interest rates
| that stimulate the economy, but the act of lowering them.
|
| Certainly monetary policy is overhyped and _not_ neutral
| as the neoclassical ones believe. (Anybody with half a
| brain can see that the COVID stimulus payments had affect
| that a decade of QE didn 't.)
|
| Maybe check out https://jwmason.org/slackwire/the-
| natural-rate-of-interest/ I think that is pretty close to
| what you are saying. If there is no natural rate, but
| many different equilibria, then we do care more about
| changes to the rate than the rate itself in some sense.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| The only thing you need to teach students is how to use gnucash
| or kmymoney. Make they log every transaction and monitor their
| balances. See how much they spend and then tell them "spend
| less." Maybe the we wouldn't have such a drastic FOMO culture
| where students and college kids blow their financial aid money on
| things that absolutely do not matter in the grand scheme of life.
| paulpauper wrote:
| >Meanwhile over half of U.S. adults say they're financially
| anxious, and over three quarters live paycheck to paycheck.
|
| This is not because of lack of financial literary. it's due to
| not making enough money.
| cascom wrote:
| I'm not too sure, have heard antidotally from a number of vets
| about how much time they spent untangling young enlisted
| personnel from stupid financial mistakes (e.g. high interest
| car/motorcycle loans, when they could have qualified for a low
| interest loan from the navy federal credit union)
| Kapura wrote:
| Has there been any data to show that financial literacy education
| improves results? My understanding was that starting with capital
| is much more important to financial success than coursework.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Rate of return trumps initial capital for any long-term
| horizon. Do the math of that:
|
| $100 initial capital invested at 50% annual returns becomes
| $330K after 20 years. This is like a successful startup on its
| growth curve, or some of the very best hedge funds (eg.
| Medallion). It's less than most cryptocurrencies (eg. Bitcoin
| has returned about 70% annually over the last 7 years).
|
| $10K at 20% annual returns becomes $383K after 20 years. This
| would be a very good active investor or someone who hits a hot
| company. Most FAANG stocks have returned about 25% over the
| past 10 years.
|
| $100K at 7% annual returns becomes $386K after 20 years. This
| is a typical index fund return.
|
| $250K at 2% annual returns becomes $371K after 20 years. This
| is a typical high-yield savings account return.
|
| $1M when you _lose_ 5% /year becomes $358K after 20 years. This
| is typical of somebody who holds mortgages or student debt
| where their asset value & income isn't increasing, or someone
| who has credit card debt equal to a quarter of their net worth.
|
| Most people underestimate the power of compound interest and
| exponential growth, which is one of the things that a financial
| literacy course really needs to teach.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > holds mortgages or student debt where their asset value &
| income isn't increasing
|
| This is generally uncommon, at least for mortgage debt. If
| you take care of your house, it usually is an appreciating
| asset, and makes the debt financing worth doing.
|
| > or someone who has credit card debt
|
| ... or a car loan. Very common. Almost nothing that people
| pay for with consumer credit is an appreciating asset. Though
| of the two, perhaps a car loan is justifiable if it enables
| you to get a (better) job and earn more money, even if the
| asset itself depreciates rapidly.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The bankruptcy rates of lottery winners seem to suggest that
| knowing how to have money is important to retaining money.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Because as we all know, having a substandard "financial
| literacy" class when you are 15 will help you after you win
| the lottery at 45, after having years of not practicing any
| of it and not keeping up-to-date on things.
| josephorjoe wrote:
| If you research this I think you'll find that starting with
| capital correlates strongly with having a financially literate
| family who can provide useful guidance.
|
| Giving capital to people who are not financially literate will
| likely end up with that capital quickly moving out of their
| hands to people who are financially literate.
| cascom wrote:
| Moreover - as you go up the capital spectrum you see an
| increasing emphasis on teaching financial literacy to
| children (just look at the marketing materials of private
| banks an wealth managers purporting to help educate the next
| generation)
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Financial literacy is useless if you can't teach folks how to
| survive when there isn't quite enough money. Teaching how to
| invest is useless if the person remains poor for the next
| 10-20 years, and if trends stay the same, they probably will
| be.
|
| Financial literacy should include this stuff, plus how to get
| help if you can't make rent, are going hungry, or are
| homeless.
| imgabe wrote:
| It bothers me that so many people use the fact that something
| wasn't taught in school as an excuse for not knowing it,
| especially something as obviously necessary as personal finance.
|
| I was dumb in college and graduated with about $4k in credit card
| debt. It didn't take a classroom lecture to realize that spending
| more money than I earned was not a sustainable practice. It's
| also not that hard to keep track of how much you spend and make
| sure it's less than how much you make.
|
| For almost anything personal finance related there is free
| information available all over the Internet if you care to spend
| a couple minutes googling for it.
|
| Likewise with taxes, if you have a regular W2 job, taxes are not
| hard, just read and follow the instructions. It doesn't help that
| people keep repeating the dumb meme that if you make a typo on
| your tax return the IRS will immediately throw you in jail. They
| won't, they just send a letter telling you they corrected it for
| you (guess how I know).
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| A policy wholly informed by boomers' stereotypes of younger
| generations being too stupid or hedonistic to achieve the sort of
| financial freedoms they got during the post-WW2 boom years.
|
| Also sacrificing the idea of a ,,liberal" education that seeks to
| enlighten and build character on the altar of capitalism and
| pragmatism.
| josephorjoe wrote:
| Maybe if people were more financially literate they would stop
| letting the boomers rob them blind by always protecting their
| own interests (stocks, houses, healthcare for old people) at
| the expense of all other aspects of society (education,
| infrastructure, health care for non-old people).
| sp332 wrote:
| I agree. Nothing wrong with the class itself but it seems like
| it's being used to blame-shift.
| [deleted]
| spikels wrote:
| Buried lede: "pragmatism" is a bad thing.
|
| The idea that actually useful information should be excluded to
| maintain ideological purity is both stupid and surprisingly
| prevalent.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Is this just rebranding of the home economics class everyone took
| 20+ years ago in junior/senior high? They could replace "how to
| balance your cheque book" with reviewing online statements and
| keep the rest of the curriculum the same IIRC...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I feel like we also need to teach kids how the IRS works and
| what withholding, tax returns, credits, and deductions actually
| mean. Balancing a checkbook is trivial compared to
| understanding what needs to be filed and when.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yes, none of my high school graduate children really
| understand any of this. When they got their first jobs I made
| them do their tax return by hand on paper. For so many
| people, "doing your taxes" is when you give your paperwork to
| H&R Block and you get a refund sometime in the first part of
| the year. They have no concept that the "refund" was their
| own money to begin with, and the fact that they are getting
| it back means that they have been giving the government an
| interest free loan for the last year.
| elihu wrote:
| I think that was all covered when I went to high school in
| the late 90's. I'm not sure if that was the norm everywhere
| in the U.S. at that time or if it was just that particular
| teacher thought it was important that we know about that
| stuff (and if so I think she was right).
| Gunax wrote:
| I actually gently disagree. There is a lot of statements that
| education doesn't teach practical skills, but i think that's
| a mistake.
|
| We don't teach specifics like 'how to do your taxes' or
| different retirement account types. But we teach general
| skills that enable those.
|
| And frankly, those change too often (both time and
| jurisdiction) and are far too broad to be very useful.
|
| When English teachers discuss Shakespeare, or history
| teachers discuss analyzing documents: they are generally not
| expecting students to have to read those particulars, but
| instead aiming for attainment of a more general skill
| (literacy, analysis, veracity).
|
| Basically, I think it's better to just teach math and
| literacy in general. Then if they want to know how APR is
| calculated, they will have the ability to research it.
|
| School cannot possibly teach everything one could want or
| need to know in life. It's more about setting a foundation.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| As far as teaching about taxes goes, I think the best thing
| to do would be to broadly cover what the taxation process
| is. Explain what the income tax is, why FICA is split
| between you and your employer, what capital gains taxes
| are, etc. I know the specifics of the tax code are fickle
| but the core principles of credits, deductions,
| withholding, refunds, etc. have been there for decades and
| are likely to remain stable. But to your point, we don't
| need to test students on their ability to fill out a 1040
| correctly, just what it's used for.
| bwb wrote:
| ya, compound interest, long term returns of the stock market,
| 401k fees, etc
| kritiko wrote:
| a problem with this is that you could eventually get to the
| truth that the best way to increase your wealth is to get a
| higher salary.
| reidjs wrote:
| Not necessarily IMO. Wealth is a function of assets,
| liabilities, income, and other factors. There are plenty
| of people with high salaries who I wouldn't consider
| wealthy by any stretch.
| bwb wrote:
| ya, I think it is a combo of salary + behaviours that
| build wealth, combined with having some idea about what
| you want from your brief time on this planet.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Home ec for me was cooking, sewing, and baking. It felt like
| the most bullshit class ever.
|
| An _actual_ home economics course - one that covers compound
| interest, net present value, discounted cash flow, different
| asset classes, efficient market hypothesis, supply & demand,
| and reading financial statements - would be _hugely_ valuable
| to kids.
| ghaff wrote:
| Those all sound like useful skills. Of course, financial
| literacy is even more so.
| sigstoat wrote:
| all i had was 6 weeks in middle school, which covered cooking
| and... embroidery? i think?
|
| there was a 7 week segment some time in high school that
| discussed economics, but it was a sort of math-free intro to
| macroencomics, as i recall. ("here's what the fed does", "the
| stock market exists", etc)
| cascom wrote:
| I actually think they need to bring back home economics
| separate and distinct from financial literacy.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Is this just rebranding of the home economics class everyone
| took 20+ years ago in junior /senior high?_
|
| In my area (Fairfax County, VA), home ec class in the 90s was
| cooking and sewing. The "economics" part disappeared from the
| curriculum sometime before I entered high school.
|
| Also, many college-bound students weren't allowed to take the
| class. It was a known waste of time - counselors actively
| pushed students towards more useful courses. In my case, that
| was a year of Latin as a senior (on top of 4 years of French).
|
| An real home economics class - with personal finance as a
| primary focus - would be very useful, IMO. I'm sure we covered
| interest rates somewhere in high school math, but it was purely
| academic - not taught in terms of useful life skill.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Also Fairfax county, also 90s; the only exposure I got to
| finances in school was in 8th grade Civics class. We spent
| maybe a week on it.
| DerekL wrote:
| > An real home economics class - with personal finance as a
| primary focus
|
| Home economics has always included a variety of household
| skills, and was never limited to just personal finance.
| recursive wrote:
| However, in some cases, it has been excluded altogether.
| Such as when I took in it the 90s. My class was roughly
| about sewing and kitchen skills.
| [deleted]
| mberning wrote:
| It's a bit hard to teach these concepts to somebody that has no
| practical knowledge of earning a paycheck, paying taxes,
| investing in a 401k, buying a car, etc. The ideas will seem far
| off and abstract. Kind of like how I could not appreciate my
| software engineering curriculum until years later after I worked
| on some horribly managed projects professionally.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Maybe the curriculum can simulate someone earning a paycheck
| and making payments, etc. Each week's lesson would be be a new
| financial month. I guess having some sort of software to keep
| track of each student's fictional finances would be cool, but
| since this is the education sector, there is probably just none
| to bad such software.
|
| I hope they also teach the kids that "stonks" and crypto are no
| better than gambling. There should be a fictional Lamborghini
| dealership in this software, to teach the kids that buying a
| super expensive car is a waste of money.
|
| Hah, writing this makes me wonder why I am lusting for an Alfa
| Romeo Giulia...
| sigstoat wrote:
| > It's a bit hard to teach these concepts to somebody that has
| no practical knowledge of [...], etc. The ideas will seem far
| off and abstract.
|
| what do you think _can_ be taught to people (K-12 students) who
| have no practical knowledge of anything?
| mc32 wrote:
| This is better than giving people free bus passes[1].
|
| It's too bad that home-ec and shop were closed in many schools
| and either defunded or replaced by other less impactful classes.
|
| These things impact the long term finances of many young people,
| many more than other niche classes would. This is probably more
| beneficial than a second language very few put to use.
|
| If $100,000/yr millennials can't balance their books[1]... then
| how can people of lesser means balance theirs?
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27575872
|
| [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27581105
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >If $100,000/yr millennials can't balance their books[1]...
| then how can people of lesser means balance theirs?
|
| Necessity is a hell of a motivator.
|
| Don't mistake the standard practices of a 100k/yr single person
| for what everyone is doing. People who are living on easy mode
| won't develop the same skills people living on hard mode will.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yes, that is true and I was aware of the discrepancy, never
| the less, people of lesser means make financial mistakes due
| to lack of financial literacy because it was not taught to
| them -these have lasting impact. On the other hand, for
| schools teaching financial literacy isn't as important as
| sports or providing a second language to kids but it should
| be.
|
| I agree those $100,000 millennials can pick up the
| pieces/recover much easier due to a deeper well of marketable
| skills and resources.
| ghaff wrote:
| Being very far away from a (private) high school education
| --I could probably go through many individual courses and
| draw a line through them for not much loss, at least the
| way they're typically taught--so it does seem as if many
| high school curricula would benefit from a "practical
| track." On the other hand, there are a bunch of courses
| that students going on to college will benefit from. Which
| basically comes dowsn to whether "trade schools" should be
| a bigger component of high school.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| Does anyone know of any good resources for learning how to
| invest? I make decent money as a software engineer and max out my
| 401k but I don't know what to do with the money I have sitting in
| the bank earning almost no interest. I have a fidelity account
| for my 401k and company stock awards but I don't know how to go
| about investing in other things. I'm looking for resources to
| learn from, not which specific stocks to buy.
| gregwebs wrote:
| First step is probably to avoid 401k rip-offs. You can find
| details about different providers including Fidelity here:
| https://www.employeefiduciary.com/sample-fee-comparisons/ You
| might possibly be able to switch your investments from a
| Fidelity fund with huge fees to something with normal fees.
|
| For your savings, M1 Finance offers 1% interest, which is
| better than nothing. IMHO it is a difficult time to start
| investing your non-retirement money because that the market has
| gone up a lot recently and bonds are at all times low. I
| wouldn't feel bad about staying out of things right now until
| you can learn a lot more.
|
| I would recommend reading everything written by Lyn Alden if
| you want to learn about all the macro forces effecting finance.
| klodolph wrote:
| You can search HN, the typical advice is to go for things like
| index funds which have low fees... the value rises with the
| rest of the stock market, but doesn't get eaten by fees. As you
| get closer to retirement you will want to alter your
| investments.
|
| You have enough money to hire a financial advisor, if you care.
| They can usually give you much better advice than random
| resources online (since their advice can be specific to your
| situation--things like taxes can be a bit complicated).
| Ancalagon wrote:
| So they can finally understand how screwed they are by the
| system, right? (Specifically with regards to housing
| affordability) /s
|
| But no really great for RI, wish my HS would have had a financial
| literacy class.
| subsubzero wrote:
| It took me so long to become "financially literate". I racked up
| big credit card bills in my 20's, bought a few cars with
| unfavorable loans around the same time. There was no education on
| how interest rates work, apr's are calculated and such. I
| probably lost 10's of thousands on poor financial decisions that
| I would have avoided if a class like this was around.
|
| Some things I have learned that have become invaluable:
|
| - Risk/reward with stocks, how bonds work.
|
| - Balancing budgets, monthly, yearly.
|
| - 401k, roth IRAs, saving for retirement.
|
| - Credit debt and how to avoid it.
|
| - Interest rates for housing and how it affects the housing
| market and purchasing power.
|
| - The importance of a "rainy day savings fund".
| jrmg wrote:
| Sorry for this barrage of questions:
|
| How did you rationalize building up big credit card bills? You
| knew you'd have to pay them back some day.
|
| Were you spending without thinking about the bills? Did you not
| understand what interest was?
|
| Could you afford the monthly payments, and think that if you
| could everything must be fine?
| delaynomore wrote:
| >I would have avoided if a class like this was around.
|
| I doubt the 20yr old me would've listened anyway.
|
| I, too, racked up some CC debt (nothing crazy) in my early 20s.
| I knew most concepts outlined above but it's really about
| dealing with temptations when you finally making real money
| with full-time work.
| sigstoat wrote:
| hopefully the final exam includes working out a post-college
| graduation budget which includes student loan repayments, and
| expected earnings.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Always _hated_ the phrase "financial literacy;" our entire
| economic system isn't set up to make my personal _reading skills
| and experience_ more difficult and weighed against my best
| interest.
| fn-mote wrote:
| In your financial literacy class, try to explain the random
| behavior of the stock market and the scientifically demonstrated
| inability of people to pick individual stocks that will increase
| in value. Watch heads explode, unable to wrap their minds around
| the idea that certain mutual funds might be profitable many years
| in a row just from pure luck.
|
| Wake me up when these financial literacy classes talk about the
| stock market in any way other than "it's a game, try to pick the
| winners". The short-term school "stock market game" is selecting
| winners from those whose strategies involve the greatest
| risk/variance. (No mention of this in TFA, but it's popular in my
| city.)
|
| There are some real hard lessons to teach here, but I'm skeptical
| of both the curriculum's content (who wrote it?) and the
| audience's ability to make sense of it.
| paulpauper wrote:
| > In your financial literacy class, try to explain the random
| behavior of the stock market and the scientifically
| demonstrated inability of people to pick individual stocks that
| will increase in value. Watch heads explode, unable to wrap
| their minds around the idea that certain mutual funds might be
| profitable many years in a row just from pure luck.
|
| Tons of people on WSB understand these concepts. I am not
| saying to emulate the behavior of WSB, but these are not
| concepts that are out of the grasp of a typical teenager.
| endymi0n wrote:
| The more I see, the more I think we need a mandatory ,,Life
| School" curriculum in classes. Financial literacy is just one
| issue, but all that stuff like media competency, scientific
| method, cui bono, negotiations, assertiveness, how to deal with
| bullies, mental health basics, economics 101, mechanics of
| addiction and manipulation aaaand so on, all explained by first
| principles, would go such a long way towards a better functioning
| society.
|
| Then again, that's not going to happen as it would eventually
| destroy whole industries and populist voter bases.
|
| I smell a non-profit I should do one day...
| lordnacho wrote:
| While I agree everyone should know those things, everyone also
| went to math, history, English, and biology yet nobody
| remembers anything from them either.
|
| None of this content will help if people don't simply learn to
| appreciate knowledge, and when they do none of the content will
| matter.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I agree. Schools are not teaching actionable kills. Just
| memorize and regurgitate type stuff. no wonder so many kids
| find it boring. Little to no applicability to real world or
| life.
| muffinman26 wrote:
| Most of these were taught in required courses when I was in
| school, and I have no reason to believe this has changed:
|
| media competency - part of history class, including evaluating
| sources, history of yellow journalism, etc.
|
| scientific method - 6+ years of science class
|
| cui bono - this is apparently a fancy term for motive, which
| was discussed during history class (specifically explaining the
| judicial branch)
|
| negotiations, assertiveness, how to deal with bullies - a
| required part of working on group projects for 6+ years of life
|
| mental health basics, mechanics of addiction - health class
|
| Economics 101 is the only one on your list that was missing,
| and presumably a financial literacy course would cover this.
| kccqzy wrote:
| These do not seem sufficient in my opinion. The reliance of
| history class to teach media competency in modern times for
| example very much depends on the quality of instruction. For
| an average teacher the history class would be filled with
| historical facts without reference to the modern times.
|
| Similarly, science class tends to teach knowledge (including
| knowledge of the scientific method) but not actually applying
| the scientific method to any real-life scenarios. Even with
| science labs, students might use the scientific method during
| class only, without extending it to decision making in life.
|
| Negotiations and stuff can be learned from group projects? No
| way. Group projects are primarily cooperative and students
| share the fruits of their combined labor. How does that
| relate to life scenarios like, negotiating a lease agreement
| with a landlord who has very different incentives? Or
| negotiating a job offer with a prospective employer when
| there is a clear mismatch in power between the two? It
| doesn't.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I had some decent science teachers in high school. I don't
| feel like it gave me a real sense of the scientific method
| and the labs were mostly technique labs rather than discovery
| or scientific method labs. I think this was driven by
| curriculum programming rather than laziness on the teachers'
| part.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| I think people forget what high school is like. I had something
| like what you've described. It was called "Life Skills". Most
| students treated it like other courses - they didn't care at
| all and learned almost nothing.
|
| I'm someone who liked school for the most part, and even I
| treated it as a "just pay attention enough to pass the test"
| class.
| omginternets wrote:
| Part of the problem is also that these courses are devoid of
| any real informational content. My experience with having
| been schooled in several countries is that kids -- including
| 17-year-old highschoolers -- tune in when the substance is
| there. I can assert with great confidence that the level of
| content in the average US curriculum is shamefully low. This
| is true in mathematics, to say nothing of "Life Skills".
| kaesar14 wrote:
| I totally agree. Do people really think a bunch of 16 year
| olds are going to pay attention to a class where you learn
| how to do your taxes or learn about the time value of money?
| The people who need this information the most were also 100%
| the last people on Earth who'd have paid attention to a class
| where it was taught, at least at my school. Our focus should
| be simplifying the way our systems are structured and
| protecting people from being taken advantage of by
| corporations who do know what they're doing.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| We had a class called "Career and Life Management" in High
| School. It was kind of trivial stupid stuff, but then again, it
| may have been useful to someone who did not get good
| information from their parents.
|
| Edit: quick google suggests it still exists:
| https://education.alberta.ca/media/160199/calm.pdf
| diydsp wrote:
| As an older person, the issue i see is most of these aren't
| really a problem until later in life. E.g. adolescents can
| eat all kinds of bad food. It will have little real impact
| until roughly late 30s. Earlier financial literacy will help
| to a point, but bolsters are needed every decade. Same with
| family relations. Motivated people like me fine, but many
| families and people just don't get the right push and it
| hurts to watch people suffer needlessly.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If you look around you will see more and more far kids
| these days. It might not kill you to be a fat twelve year
| old but it can hardly be considered of no real impact.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| That's the problem I have when people argue for the
| important ace of rigorous high school civics: the useful
| parts won't prove to be useful until several years after
| graduation, so even a motivated student has ample time to
| forget (and the students know they'll forget, so there's
| even less motivation to learn in the first place)
| satellite2 wrote:
| I definitely agree that this kind of curriculum should be
| widely offered.
|
| I'm much more doubtful about the scope of the positive impact
| it would have.
|
| I think it's roughly the idea that lack of culture is caused by
| a distribution problem. I think internet more than showed that
| improving distribution works only up to a limit.
|
| There is a theory - the paradox of abundance - that paradoxally
| after you reach this limit you actually decrease access to the
| ones that need it the most.
|
| https://perell.com/note/the-paradox-of-abundance/
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The state is the last institution I trust to design a "life
| school" curriculum.
|
| Remember, these are the people who require your drivers ed
| instructor to tell you to go 55 on I95 where the traffic goes
| 85. They're optimizing for covering their own butts while
| nominally educating people. They don't really care about truly
| education people so those people can go do to what will result
| in the best outcome for them.
|
| They'll do something self serving and asinine like tell
| students you should make minimum payments on high interest debt
| rather than ask for a financial hardship extension/reduction
| for government services/fees/fines (which in many cases are
| legally required to take that into account).
| smhost wrote:
| That's funny, because public school is where I learned the
| difference between letter of the law and spirit of the law.
| We even did a "compare and contrast" worksheet with speed
| limits as one of the examples.
|
| Besides, the alternatives to public education are all worse.
| iammisc wrote:
| The indoctrination is so obvious when statements are made
| with no justification or even any attempt.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| There were are ton of things I learned in Psych 101, Phil 101,
| Econ 101 that all should have been taught in high school. Your
| list is a great start.
|
| I'd add anger management (though perhaps mental health basics
| would cover this), practical logical fallacies, sunk costs, and
| basic law.
| eesmith wrote:
| Every topic added means another must be cut.
|
| What gets cut? P.E? Foreign language? History? Math?
| Electives? English?
| cascom wrote:
| I don't think it's zero sum, there's no reason most
| districts couldn't add 2-weeks to the school year.
|
| That being said, they fact that reading math scores are so
| low in many places my pre-supposed "advanced" topics life
| financial literacy.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Adding two weeks to the school year subtracts two weeks
| from the things kids learn when they're not bored to
| death and controlled.
| Unklejoe wrote:
| There is definitely some fat to trim. For example, I
| remember spending almost an entire marking period studying
| the poems from Edgar Allan Poe. Nothing personal against
| the guy, but it's largely useless knowledge for the
| majority of people.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I rebelled internally and hated much of my English
| courses. "There's no way the author intended all that
| secondary meaning." "I read that whole story and didn't
| even find out if the Tiger was behind the door?!" "Who
| cares about the island kid's glasses?!"
|
| 35 years later, the ability to write English has probably
| had at least the same amount of positive influence over
| my career as my ability to write C++ or Javascript.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Maybe? Making good, well rounded, happy humans should be
| the number one goal. Skipping a bit of everything else
| working towards that goal wouldn't hurt.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I would definitely cut PE.
|
| Most of it amounts to moving around for 30 min and you get
| graded on wether you brought a change of clothes.
|
| Thats not to say PE couldn't be useful. Physical fitness
| was never my strong suit in highschool and PE did nothing
| to change that.
|
| After making a good salary in a startup, I worked with a
| personal trainer and learned about muscle hypertrophy,
| starting strength and general strategies for conditioning
| along with diet with particular goals. Maybe if we taught
| that stuff in PE, it would be worth keeping around.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| My PE class was actually contained a fair amount of that,
| just wildly out of date now. Just burning off
| energy/stress is probably a good thing for teenagers
| though ...
| [deleted]
| kelnos wrote:
| Definitely cut PE; in most primary schools in the US it's
| just enforced exercise, and there's really nothing
| educational about it.
|
| I'm torn on foreign language. I think everyone should be
| bilingual, at least. But how it's taught in US schools is
| mostly useless. I took Spanish every year from 7th grade
| through 12th, but my Spanish even just a few years later
| was conversationally useless. I think kids should be
| learning a second language pretty much immediately when
| they start going to school, and there should be an effort
| to ensure it gets used outside that language class. (Easy
| if they only teach a single second language, but harder if
| students/parents get a choice.)
|
| We did have a home economics class at some point in either
| middle or high school. I don't remember it very well, but I
| think that could have been a good place to teach some basic
| financial literacy. What I do remember was a bunch of
| sewing projects, and while I do think sewing is an
| essential life skill (I still on occasion hand-sew things),
| I don't think learning how to sew a stuffed animal is more
| important than learning how debt works.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'm torn on this. Do people really need to be spoonfed all
| information?
| mjfl wrote:
| > media competency, scientific method, cui bono, negotiations,
| assertiveness, how to deal with bullies, mental health basics,
| economics 101, mechanics of addiction and manipulation
|
| These are all, in principle, taught at most public schools. The
| problem is students don't learn them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I went to a solid Californian public school. Zero anything on
| mental health or addiction. Got the negotiation but through
| extracurriculars; the core programme stayed almost
| intentionally clear of anything remotely commercial.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The problem is that by the time students start being taught
| them, they've been exposed to years of media and ad messaging
| influence which undermine them.
| burlesona wrote:
| This is great news. I've long thought that high school students
| would be better served if they substituted statistics and finance
| for pre-calculus and calculus. Most people gain very little
| utility from Calculus, but a better understanding of Finance and
| Statistics, especially interest rates, amortization, time value
| of money, and probabilities.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Well if you had to have one or the other, I think you are
| actually right. Prob and stats are essential in any discussion
| of real-world data, which comes up pretty much every day. They
| are also the best way into dealing with something inherently
| messy, which data pretty much is all the time. It's a good way
| to talk about what you think is true and why, critical to
| decision making.
|
| Calculus on the other hand is bit too beautiful. At high school
| level at least, you get all these smooth curves, everything has
| a nice closed form answer, and you start to think that maybe
| these beautiful shapes describe the universe. It's actually not
| that easy to do, it just happens that we found some examples
| where it works quite well, and they are just the kinds of
| things we teach in physics in those same years.
|
| When we then get to an economics class, it unravels. There's a
| whole menagerie of calculus assumptions that creep into the
| minds of credulous students. Lets assume Cobb-Douglass
| production function. Let's say the utility must be this shape.
| Oh look at what beautiful conclusions we get.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > Most people gain very little utility from Calculus
|
| Because the purpose of high school and basic university
| mathematics is to make people smarter. Algebra or calculus deal
| with abstractions and concepts that are hard to master. They
| are like lifting heavy weights. A course on statistics and
| finance is easier and hence like lifting light weights.
|
| This has independent of the fact that high school teachers and
| underpaid, overworked, undertrained, and are forced to teach to
| the test, and so unable to really teach mathematics as they
| students deserved
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I love me some Calculus, but the reason it is required is
| that 60 years ago we were worried that the Soviets were
| outpacing us in rocket design, which was seen as a major
| threat to our national security. Calculus is pretty darn
| useful for building rockets.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree that this would be helpful but people are lazy and
| don't really care. They know the car costs $60K but they only
| ask what the monthly payment is. We really need a strong CPB to
| get rid of all the rent seeking and exploitative business
| practices that are all the "profit" centers for so many
| businesses.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Even algebra is of limited to no use for most people, and I
| support skipping it for something more useful to more people.
| xxpor wrote:
| "How long do I need to keep money in an account for it to
| double if it grows at 8% a year" is an algebra problem. I
| suspect they're more common than you expect, you're just used
| to it.
| wmf wrote:
| I don't know if the current algebra curriculum is teaching
| people how to solve real problems though.
| japhyr wrote:
| I taught middle and high school math for many years, and I
| always offered financial-focused projects as an option for
| students. I also used financial examples on a regular basis,
| just to keep a healthy, rational conversation about financial
| literacy going. The two most important topics over the years
| seemed to be loan analysis and understanding taxes.
|
| To understand loans, I taught students how to determine the
| monthly payment for a loan using a blank spreadsheet. For
| students who were intimidated by spreadsheets, we'd start the
| process on a whiteboard. Just a simple spreadsheet with columns
| like month, current principal, payment, towards interest,
| towards principal, new principal. Then guess-and-check to see
| what the payment needed to be in order to pay off the loan in a
| specified time period.
|
| That was great, because it let everyone see how loan payments
| are calculated in the first place. Then it let curious students
| explore the impact of paying above the minimum, making lump sum
| payments at various intervals, different interest rates,
| initial no-payment periods, and other loan "features". We also
| looked at cumulative interest and other long-term aspects of a
| loan. Students could do their own projects about car loans,
| home loans, business loans, and more. Every time I've taken out
| a loan in my life, I've done this myself, and it's made the
| experience better every time. Just doing this once lets you
| talk to a loan officer on a much more eye-to-eye level. This is
| education as consumer advocacy, fighting back against predatory
| practices one class at a time.
|
| For taxes, I just had students either bring in their own pay
| stubs or W2s, or work with a sample set related to a field they
| were interested in working in. Then I had them fill out a 1040
| by hand. They had to start out with the simplest 1040, and they
| could choose to try a more complex version after that. I had
| them repeat the process for several income levels; most
| students had no idea what a "tax bracket" actually is. I'd
| start with a question like "You're making $__k/yr, and you're
| offered a $1k raise. The raise will bump you into the next tax
| bracket. Should you accept the raise?" Many students said no,
| because they had no concept of incremental tax rates.
|
| You have to present this material carefully. If you tell a
| whole class of math students, "Okay, everyone's learning to
| analyze loans this week!" they'll hate it. If you say, "We're
| learning to analyze numerical patterns, and one of the patterns
| you can analyze is how banks determine the monthly payment for
| the car or house loan you might want in a few years", they'll
| jump on it.
| derekp7 wrote:
| For tax brackets, I like the bucket of ping pong balls
| analogy. After filling up each bucket you color a percentage
| of the balls green (done on the whiteboard of course), which
| represents the government's cut. When a bucket gets full,
| balls overflow into the next bucket. And monthly paycheck
| deductions are based on 1/12'th of the green balls in each
| bucket.
|
| This then explains why when you get a bonus it is taxed at
| 22% as those balls go in the last bucket with room in it (or
| 24%..., whatever the highest marginal tax rate someone is
| in).
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| >For tax brackets, I like the bucket of ping pong balls
| analogy. After filling up each bucket you color a
| percentage of the balls green (done on the whiteboard of
| course), which represents the government's cut. When a
| bucket gets full, balls overflow into the next bucket. And
| monthly paycheck deductions are based on 1/12'th of the
| green balls in each bucket.
|
| Thank you, this looks like a really clear and concise way
| of explaining the topic! I've been looking for a better way
| to explain it, particularly the bonuses.
| josephorjoe wrote:
| The lack of understanding of basic finance and statistics is
| crippling for many people.
|
| I know fairly smart people who understand calculus but just
| cannot accept that there is a problem with paying interest on
| all of their purchases.
|
| They simply do not understand that eliminating high interest
| debt as soon as possible (or never acquiring it in the first
| place) is essential to ever having financial security.
|
| Honestly it sometimes feels like the normalizing of financial
| illiteracy is intentional, although I'm willing to accept that
| the lenders of high interest debt are just taking advantage of
| the situation they've found.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > I know fairly smart people who understand calculus but just
| cannot accept that there is a problem with paying interest on
| all of their purchases.
|
| I do not think this is a problem with _education_. It sounds
| like they understand, they just do not care. I think that is
| a different (harder) problem.
|
| You're unhappy that people do not believe it is beneficial to
| be debt-free. As you note - there are many groups who benefit
| (profit) from this kind of spend-spend-spend consumption
| culture.
|
| Frankly, I am astounded that COVID did not bring about a
| massive economic collapse that would have driven the point
| about financial security home in a dreadful way. I'm grateful
| it didn't, though.
| croes wrote:
| Sounds like a road to more flat earthers and anti-vaxxers.
|
| The more practical math and the less abstraction the less
| critical thinking.
| cascom wrote:
| I'm perpetually shocked that many professional people (e.g.
| journalists with masters degrees) have a tenuous grasp at best
| on: basic accounting, how the US tax system functions, simple
| financial concepts (simple math on NPV/perpetuities/annuities,
| Compounding), and financial market basics (stocks vs bonds,
| market cap vs enterprise value)
| recursive wrote:
| Hi. I'm one of the professionals you'd be shocked by. One of my
| problems is that I don't know who to trust. It seems like most
| of the people who would explain any of it also have something
| to sell.
|
| Of the concepts you listed, I think I understand compounding,
| at least the one pertaining to interest rates. The others are a
| mystery to me. I'm in a stable 6-figure career and in my 40s.
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm waiting for this to be repealed because it's thought to
| disadvantage minority students.
| elijaht wrote:
| Honestly- I don't think 99% of students will care. And those that
| do are largely the type that will not need this class (well off,
| or already would be doing this research, for example).
|
| I think it's really hard to care about 99% of personal finance
| until you are in it, and thankfully most students in this class
| won't have to care about the material immediately. And the
| material is bottom of the barrel in terms of intellectual
| stimulation and a surprising large body of material. Without
| "hooks" like actually paying rent, electric, etc. it feels so
| abstract that nothing sticks well.
|
| We had a course like this required as part of my high school
| graduation reqs and among myself/friends it was hugely
| ineffective.
|
| I don't know what the best way to solve this problem is, but I'm
| dubious this will benefit anyone
| [deleted]
| nubb wrote:
| I took an independent living class in high school that taught
| me basic checkboook balancing, cooking, cleaning, etc and while
| I didn't care then, I can't say I didn't learn and retain
| anything.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I was required to pass a personal finance class in high school,
| it resonated with me, and I am far more comfortable than most
| people my age. A class may not resonate with every person, but
| for those who take the lessons to heart and grasp the
| incredible potential of exponential growth, it will be
| absolutely life changing.
| vmception wrote:
| its still the exposure that's relevant. simple exposure can
| alter search queries later, or give people a referential source
| to look back to, even if rote memorization or even critical
| thinking was completely neglected.
|
| a student going through this class will make fun of it with
| their peers, but then be completely shocked at how useless and
| poor the decision making is from people outside their school.
| paulpauper wrote:
| >Honestly- I don't think 99% of students will care. And those
| that do are largely the type that will not need this class
| (well off, or already would be doing this research, for
| example).
|
| yeah because they find other subjects more captivating? May as
| well replace one boring subject with a boring one that at least
| has more applicability to real life.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > Honestly- I don't think 99% of students will care. And those
| that do are largely the type that will not need this class
| (well off, or already would be doing this research, for
| example).
|
| we subject students to learning about stuff few of them care
| about. what's the argument for keeping all of that material,
| but rejecting this?
|
| > Without "hooks" like actually paying rent, electric, etc. it
| feels so abstract that nothing sticks well.
|
| what are the hooks for getting other high school material to
| stick?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| There aren't any. Many of the students complaining about
| being forced to take pre calculus also tend to forget it.
| OP's point was that teaching them is useless if they'll just
| forget it.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Possibly but I think a lot of what can be taught would be of
| interest to teenagers. Like the real cost of financing college
| and how credit card interest works. There really is a litany of
| small things that can be catalogued as "personal finance" that
| young people could find interesting. After all, every kid wants
| to "be rich" one day.
|
| Detailing how compound interest works and how easy it is to
| begin investing in the free market with a small bit early that
| can turn into much more 25 years down the road, for example.
| FWIW I had a similar class in high school and loved it.
| Learning about markets as well as basic things like managing a
| checking account were fun and felt empowering. It was a very
| practical course and I'd agree with you that avoiding the
| abstract is probably important.
|
| Kids, and many adults, really do not understand the
| relationship between money and time and what time is better to
| teach people about that than when they have a lot of time left?
|
| I think it's important to champion capitalism and free, public,
| markets, as it is our proven way of life, and teach young
| people how they can choose to participate in it without much to
| start with. Much better than trends in teaching kids it is
| hopeless and we need to socialize everything.
| patpending wrote:
| What in the world is going on with that URL?
| wmf wrote:
| That's the original title of the article and it was changed
| later. This is a common "glitch" in CMSes.
| ilikepi wrote:
| The title suggested by the URL slug seems especially odd in
| this case, since the article seems generally positive and
| says nothing about "brainwashing".
| runbathtime wrote:
| Slippery slope for proponents of bitcoin to slip bitcoin into the
| curriculum.
|
| Imo financial concepts should have been taught along with math,
| because math is pretty boring to most students the way it is
| taught currently.
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