As an 8-year old, I had a different teacher who gave us artificial checking accounts and pretend checks. We used the checks to place pretend orders from toy catalogs, and we balanced our “checkbooks” to find out how much money was left. There’s a reason they always say it’s “never too early to start,” you know?

I am currently trying to get personal finance classes started in our local library system because our schools do not teach it at all.

Money does not equal Happiness

We have stopped in on occasion to follow up on “the lessons” we have been working on. They have often given us even more resources than those listed on the site. They might also share those with you if you made the request.

re: today’s post – I have a 17 year old at home. Technically, in one year my teen will be an adult and should be able to live on their own. I feel that the majority of the education she has received in the last few years is purely theoretical based strictly in the ideal environments. Or sometimes worse, heavily biased to the personal interests of some of the teachers. Usually, the teachers do not have alot of freedom in their lesson plans and are just as frustrated as we are, so I do not blame the teachers. Life application lessons and critical thinking have fallen hard to the wayside in favor of political correctness and going way overboard in sensitivity training. I think this is a sad backlash of severe policies put into place to avoid any controversy and even more importantly to the powers that be – avoidance of any form of liabilty. The result? I am not just afraid my teen is not ready for life, I am terrified because I know she is not.

I equivicate the new policies toward curriculum style to an individual wanting to start their own small business and enrolling in courses where the curriculum is focused on how to be upper management of a fortune 500 company. – you don’t learn to do the accounting, you learn how to hire an accountant; -you don’t learn human resource policies and laws, you learn how to develop a good HR department; etc. If you intend to run a company where at first you will be the sole employer and the sole employee, the real life application of your education makes it impossible to move forward. The guy down the block who chose not to take the courses is actually better off just from the lessons of trial and error.

In our house, we continue to look for ways to supplement life skills education to bridge the gaps. For finances, one of our local credit unions has a fairly good program for young adults. Here is the web address – http://www.usfcu.org/asp/products/product_7_6.asp
These tools have given us a good base to discuss applicable theory, use our own finances as real life examples, and then to together make plans using her own finances.

There may be other programs out there that are as good or better, but I love that this program is geared specifically toward the young adult. They have made it really easy to introduce and understand sometimes complex ideas.

This should be taught in schools because if it’s not, they learn personal finance from their parents the way I did. Which means I learned how to go bankrupt in my forties, have no savings or retirement fund, and how to leech off of my father, if I were so inclined.

I actually learned how the credit system worked from an off-hand comment by one of my roommates. I learned how to budget by working myself into debt.

I am in my early twenties and all of this did not happen because I’m lazy. It happened because I never learned the value of money. This is why people my age are going into debt.

If people spend less, save more, don’t buy things they don’t need and don’t rack up massive amounts of credit card debt, that’s less money for corporations and local businesses (many of which provide sponsorships/financial support to schools)It may sound like a conspiracy but it’s easier to make money off the uneducated and uninformed.

http://nefe.org/HighSchoolProgram/tabid/146/Default.aspx

I think learning how to make ends meet on a resasonable salary would be great. Take the starting salary of whatever profession they see themselves in, show them all the taxes that come out, health insurance, retirement, etc. Then create a reasonable budget for food, clothing, utilities, housing, car, gas, gifts, student loans, emergencies and every other little thing that can come up in life. Then take it further and throw in a child since so many very young adults are having kids. See how fast the diapers, formula, daycare, working less or staying at home etc. all affect the budget. Students should see what kind of apartment a certain amount of money will get you, not just look in the newspaper. You might be able to live in a $500 a month apartment but what is the neighborhood like? Throughout the year the students should have certain emergencies or other financial requirements pop up unexpectedly. How does this affect their spending?

Kids should also learn about the dangers of credit cards. How long will it take to pay off that new flat screen TV? How many hours of work is that equivalent to? They should also be shown how compounding interest works.

And of course the basics about money market funds, mutal funds, individual stocks. They could even play a stockpicking game, like the one on CNN. Learn about price/earnings ratios and such.

Lots of luck Trent. Love the idea!

@Kate
Very good point about the special financial needs of women- I’ve never heard any of this addressed while in high school. I think mentioning that women typically earn less and often interrupt their careers to have children is treading into dangerous territory for many H.S. teachers. Not to mention divorce and the importance for women to understand and be involved with the family finances. They just don’t want to go there.

In the past, I’ve taught my college freshmen using real-world examples, such as you have $700 to get a new computer because yours just broke…which one are you going to go with and why (and not just rely on advertising).

While I think saving early for retirement is a very, very important topic, I’m not sure it will appeal to a student who isn’t making any money. It should definitely be mentioned, but it’s hard to get a 30-year-old excited about retirement (trust me, I’ve met a few of them).

I think it would be valuable to show how much things/food/clothing cost in the world. Have a set annual income for their chosen profession and call a few apartment places, etc. to get quotes. Teach them how to plan meals and how much it will cost at the grocery store, etc. Then, figure out how much paying off a certain amount of students loans will cost each year. (I wish I had understood a bit more about that one).

My personal feeling is that this is a parent’s job. But, then again, I think there are a lot of things that are a parent’s job that have become a teacher’s job. That being said, it’s still important to provide the information because even if it reaches one kid – you have made a difference.