90% of People Believe Personal Finance Should be Taught in School
April 14th, 2007 | by Brian Carr |Thanks to a recent poll on Saving Without A Budget, it appears that I’m not alone in the belief that personal finance should be incorporated into the core curriculum of America’s schools.
According to the poll, 89% of respondents stated that they believed that personal finance should be a required part of every child’s education.
The logic behind teaching children and teenagers about personal finance is pretty obvious. Just think of all of the finance cliches that you’ve heard: start investing as early as you can, the most important factor in investing is time, don’t get into credit card debt, etc. - all things that are best to learn sooner rather than later.
And because many basic aspects of personal finance currently aren’t taught in school and are left to be learned at home, this current system seems to nurture the fact that wealthy people tend to stay wealthy and poor people tend to stay poor. I don’t think it takes a giant leap of faith to see the possible correlation.
And probably the most ironic part of this is, the results of the Saving Without A Budget poll come on the heels of a recent report that shows nearly half of all people in the workforce have less than $25,000 in savings for retirement.Â
Again, it doesn’t take an MBA to see that this number would probably be a lot less if all of us had been exposed to some basic personal finance lessons as we were growing up.
27 Responses to “90% of People Believe Personal Finance Should be Taught in School”
By cc on Apr 15, 2007 | Reply
I believe absolutely that children need to be taught how to handle money. Unfotunately, their parents are not always the best teachers. I grew up with parents that new nothing of financial responsibility, therefore, in my young adulthood, because I learned by example, I also started down that route. Credit card debt, bill consolidation loans, etc. Fortunately I married a man who taught me financial responsibility. He learned it from his parents, and we were fortunate enough to instill that same responsibility in our children. So my feeling is, whether they learn it from their parents, or a class at school, learning financial responsibility is a must for young people of today. Start in elementary school!
By Doug on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
Elementary school?!?!?!? You’re kidding me.
You can’t learn about financial responsibilty until you’re old enough to have the money in the first place.
If you tried to teach me about this in elementary school my response would have been, “Yeah, so what, my parents pay for everything.”
I definitely agree that in my later years of high school and definitely in college this is something that should have been offered. Once you’re forced to learn what managing money is like, the lessons are much more valuable.
By Brian Carr on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
Unfortunately, many high school and college students can use that same “my parents pay for everything” excuse as well.
Besides, I think personal finance can be incorporated into elementary school education the same way math or science is. I mean, we teach kids about the basics (i.e. addition and subtraction) before we throw the hard stuff at them (i.e. trigonomitry or calculus). Same thing can be done with personal finance.
By Alex on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
Economics is required in Indiana.
By Jason on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
Can you imagine what would happen to our economy if people learned how to spend their money carefully? Our economic system depends upon lots and lots of poor people.
By J.B. on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
Do you really think that Big Corporations would allow this to happen? They want you ignorant so they can get you paying some monthly crap as soon as possible in your life. Same with banks. Do you think they want you to realize how a home morgage works, how interest is calculated on credit cards, why it’s financially ridiculous to lease a car? Nope, they don’t. They just want you to spend, spend, spend. Of course, if they get to pocket that wonderful 10% to 20% interest rate, the better it is for them.
However, the schools will be more than glad to teach you math, english compostion, and every other worthless & useless material they can find. Bring up the topic of personal finance whose information you will use for the rest of your life and that’s not important.
By dar33k on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
What the frick:
” Again, it doesn’t take an MBA to ”
is that? I’ve met tons of MBA’s that I wouldn’t trust to take care anything, maybe my McDonalds order can be properly accomplished.
By Viking on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
I think this is definately needed by at least the college level. I think they should replace a lot of the required courses like philosophy and classes like that with classes that have to deal with “How To Lease A Car” or “How To Buy A House”. Things like that would have definately helped me understand what a ‘lease’ was and how in the world I could afford a $500K house with a mediocre salary.
By metaldwarf on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
@ viking
tell me how i can afford a $500k house on a mediocre salary… im still trying to figure that out. and it better not be no god damned 99 year mortgage
By Thomas on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
Excellent article and I totally agree that our school systems should definitely integrate some sort of personal finance portion into there curriculum. I also feel that some responsibility should fall into the laps of parents and teaching there children the value of a dollar.
By altseeker on Apr 16, 2007 | Reply
Great idea– another class for teens to skip and nap through.
By Jameel on Apr 17, 2007 | Reply
We are all MISSING THE POINT. We’re so focused on investing, and saving and getting rich that people don’t know how to manage the money they have!
People still get into too much debt, even though everyone says it’s a bad thing. These days trying to avoid debt is futile. The missing link is that no one’s explaining how to stay on top of debt. Learn to manage it – this will teach us how to avoid becoming a victim of it.
We need to teach kids HOW checking accounts work, the TERMS of credit card agreements, how to stay ORGANIZED so your bills can get paid on time. I have tons of clients that have money and can’t pay their bills on time!
Now I teach teenagers and they love it! They want to learn this stuff - not investing and calculating interest.
By Motorcycle Guy on Apr 27, 2007 | Reply
I think they should be given the opportunity maybe, but I seriously doubt many would take it.
By Sam on May 20, 2007 | Reply
I think personal finance should be taught at school but first and most of all, it should be taught at home. We are taught how to work for money, that’s fine. But we often only see examples of how to spend money - we miss the good opportunities to make our money grow, by lack of awareness. We are not taught to be financially wise at all in the current system.
Personally, with what I am aware of today, I know I could have easily retired a millionaire at 35 if only I had well managed my assets and income in my early 20s. If everybody had a better financial education, our personal and nation-wide economy would be in way better shape.
By rockytop97 on Jun 1, 2007 | Reply
I think the reason public schools don’t teach kids about debt and money management is because the government would lose money. Think about it, if kids were aware of “borrower is slave to the lender” then no kids in their right mind would get a student loan. Also, if they got smart with money at a early age then they would realize how screwed up their parents finances are and realize they aren’t paying for their college. I guess then it’s the parents job to educate their kids by example. Monkey see Monkey do.
By J.E. Thomas on Dec 13, 2007 | Reply
I had a Economics teacher in high school who took it upon himself to teach all of his students a personal finance class. One day every semester, he would teach his new students regarding savings, mutual funds, and other important basic personal finance issues. It was great.
By NBC on Dec 26, 2007 | Reply
The best way to teach a lesson is to force a lesson…..
I grew up on a farm in the 80’s/90’s that was always on hard times. I didn’t get get school clothes or lunch money or even toys….without earning them. I was paid a hourly wage for my work, then that money was set aside for my lunch money, toys, heck I even had to buy a twin bed at 12!
It opened my eyes up, that this world is driven by hard work and hard work gets you cash! I started my first retirement account at 19 after completing basic training(ARMY) and have never looked back! I will retire early!
By Personal Checks Unlimited on Jan 7, 2008 | Reply
There is really know reason why this personal finance cannot be taught, in at least some form at very early ages. The basic principals of cash flow are really the most important building blocks. Weighing how much is coming in with how much is going out is a principal that even young kids can understand, (probably better than most of us adults). This could easily be implemented in at least a conceptual way in elementary school, and could be built upon in more advanced ways throughout schooling.
-Alan
By Tina Anderson on Feb 20, 2008 | Reply
This has been an argument for many years now, and I always hear it from my father, but it seems like we just can’t make the necessary changes to our educational system.
By claudio on Mar 27, 2008 | Reply
It is a joke that this is not taught at the high school level. This is done on purpose because the government wants it this way because the more people spend, the more the corporations make, the more they make, the more taxes they pay and the more the government has to push their agenda on the rest of the world. If People really knew how to manage money they would spend less and save more, but that is not good for the government because they will collect less taxes. Its not coincidence that personal finance is not required in High School and probably never will be. By withholding knowledge from the masses, the government and rich corporations have power over us because we dont have the knowledge, the day this changes is the day that the gap between rich and poor starts to narrow and wealth will be better distributed amongst all people. At the same time, corporations will lose some of their luster. Also, did you know that banks make over $ 9 billion a year in late fees and fees in general. In theory, if everyone was careful and did things right this number should be zero. What do you think the companies and the government would say to that ? They would not be too happy because its less money in their pockets. The whole system is a joke.