D’oh! You’re right! Sorry about that.

This type of statement as often presented as an absolute given but I frankly find it a lame excuse to lay blame away from personal responsibility. In elementary schools the kids learn basic math and often cash is used as the real world example. Middle school math expands on this and often has compounding interest examples, which is included in various forms up through the one year of math which most states require high school students take. So its not like they don’t know about the “power of compound interest” or money in general. In our area schools they’ve replaced the “home economics” cooking class with a class to address home life issues, to include creating a budget and a consumer spending section. While they don’t belabor being out of debt, the idea of living within your means is covered. Often, in social studies classes, you get exposed to business ideas, stock investing, capitolism versus socilism, etc. Honestly, I got a lot of this back when I was in middle and high school many years ago and do remember the exposure to it.

So essentially the basics are out there and provided. That people blow them off, ignore them, or conviently forget them, is not necessarily the school’s fault any more than someone saying they don’t know the rules to football, even though they had gym sessions in it three years running in middle and high school. I mean, for crying out loud how many sixth graders know the basics for writing a letter or paper and yet how many adults couldn’t come close because they can’t be bothered to look it up.

For the most part people chose to forget those things that don’t interest them, and the basics of personal finance aren’t particularly interesting to a 14 year old who’s stream of real income comes from Mom and Dad. That interest sadly comes later to most of us when we have to deal with the real world.

I could be missing something, and I’m sure a historian could correct me, but I think we’re looking at closer to $1000 2008 dollars for Manhattan rather than 77 million.”

That was a direct quote from the book, not *my* inflation illustration.

Finance education is missing, but there is plenty of basic consumer education… they are called advertisements… buy, buy, buy!

Or did you mean good basic consumer education to counter that force?

As for taxes, I’m going to be talking to a CPA this year at least. It’s my first year with lots of blogging/freelance income and I want to do it right. Depending on how things go, I may do them in the future.

Before, I always did my taxes myself: manually when I was single and had 2 jobs (one school, one home) and then using software once I got married and had to deal with a bunch of paychecks.

Your inflation illustration is pretty misleading. Inflation was pretty miniscule until the last century or so, especially since the United States has adopted fiat currency.

I could be missing something, and I’m sure a historian could correct me, but I think we’re looking at closer to $1000 2008 dollars for Manhattan rather than 77 million.

I strongly disagree with this if you own your own business or are thinking of starting one. I made this mistake when I first started my business and it has cost me tens of thousands of dollars. There are complicated writeoffs and depreciation schedules that a CPA can find for you that you likely won’t know about. Even TurboTax won’t help you if you’re doing more than filing a simplistic schedule C.

If you are a salaried employee and that’s the only money you make, the cheap tax prep software will work fine for you. But this is terrible advice for anyone who has rental property, manages a small business, or makes consulting income on the side. Take it from someone who lost a LOT of money trying to save a little bit.

-Erica