Does it make sense to teach senior high school students personal finance?

[Mounds]

Scenario: You are getting ready to go to graduate and the school brings in a speaker on personal finance. He gives everyone a work booklet to look at in their own time and gives a riveting speech, describing just how bad consumer debt is. He describes how to build the budget you actually want to live on, how virtually anyone can become a millionaire and how to never worry about money using the laziest method you've ever heard of.
Do you think it would make a difference?

[Curtis2011]

Personally I think there are so many things wrong with public education that anything new they teach will be inherently corrupted by the crummy system in which it is taught.

However, if they could teach finance to teenagers in a meaningful and effective way, yes I think it could really help them as they are growing up.

For instance, teach them something about how $100,000 in student loans to get a degree in General Studies is a horrible idea.

[Angela]

I think grade school would be a good time to start.

[Mounds]

Originally Posted by Curtis2011

However, if they could teach finance to teenagers in a meaningful and effective way, yes I think it could really help them as they are growing up.

When I was in high school, the only personal finance we were taught was in the "easy/dumb" math class. The math class for the kids who couldn't catch onto pre-calculus and calculus. To me, that makes absolutely no sense. The kids who don't end up in the higher math are the ones who get the personal finance education. Naturally, everyone treated it like a joke since it was borderline impossible to fail this class.
I think the teaching should be mandatory but it should be fun. I found that personal finance has very little to do with math and more with foresight. I think I might be able to bring that across in a fun way. Only thing is, how do you market to people who are trying to get as far from education as possible?

For instance, teach them something about how $100,000 in student loans to get a degree in General Studies is a horrible idea.

That would be out of scope for me. That's up to those young whippersnappers to figure out if their degree will make money.
At any rate, I'd much rather go into student loan debt than consumer debt. Consumer debt is filthy and you don't get anything out of it. Even if you don't use your degree, you still have something. In fact, if you look around, lots of people don't use their degree but it helped them land jobs. My wife is such an example. Went to school for a year to work in hospitals and ended up at a trucking company. Neither of us give a crap. She makes a high hourly wage and has benefits.

I think grade school would be a good time to start.

Yep, I agree. I don't connect as well to young children as I do to young adults so I would leave that to someone else. I like young adults because they're at the stage in their lives where it makes a real difference. I'll teach my own kids to save some of their allowance and all that jazz. Hopefully other parents will do the same thing with their kids.
Another thing I could anticipate is the amount of protest you'd get to teaching youngin's about PF. I mean, people rage against anything these days and I'm sure that's the reason schools don't teach many life skills. Teach life skills and the parents get upset cause they don't agree with it. Don't teach it and the anti-school crowd gets up in arms.

-Tim

[Daffy Duck]

Originally Posted by Angela

I think grade school would be a good time to start.

Agreed!

Yes, yes, yes. Children should be taught how to handle their money. If not by the school, then by their parents (who may also not know how to handle their money... hmm...). So many kids run off to college and rack up a bunch of credit card debt.

[Curtis2011]

Any type of debt is bad really, especially for young college-age'd people who are at the beginning of their financial lives and have never had an education in personal finance.

(Sidenote: Sometimes debt can be good for businesses if they know what they are doing. Generally it is bad for individuals though)

Most "normal" young people in college have enough sense to avoid credit card debt, but I have noticed tons and tons of my friends in college tell me that they are going to be up to 100K, sometimes even 150K in debt for student loans just to go to college.

Honestly they would probably be better off just working straight after high school and taking college classes for much cheaper part-time at a community college. In that case they could get a degree in maybe 6 years doing it part time, but never have to go into massive debt, and end up making just as much future income anyways.

Not to mention I recently read an article that says that getting a Master's degree actually adds zero statistical probability of a higher average income over your lifetime. The article said some researcher discovered that it only increases your chances of getting a higher paying job right out of college, but after that it pretty much doesn't matter at all, and eventually the average incomes of MBA holders and regular Bachelor's degree holder basically evens out.

[Mounds]

While I don't agree that all debt is bad debt, I do like the idea of doing your courses part-time in order to avoid debt. Honestly, debt is no fun but if that's your only means of getting an education, then it does make sense. My wife was working for minimum wage ($9.50)/hour, took an $11,000 course and now she has $15.50/hour plus benefits, as previously mentioned. That's a heck of an investment.
Consumer debt is what gets me. If you ever find yourself solemnly saying, "A million dollars isn't a lot of money these days...", immediately rack up $25,000 dollars in debt and try to pay it back. You will immediately appreciate money a lot more and suddenly, a million dollars is going to look like a lot of money.

[masoninthesis]

I just graduated from highschool two years ago, and we had a decent finance program. Everyone is required to take a class called Financial Literacy in order to graduate. Basically, it focuses on the credit card debt thing. Talks about budgeting and other stuff as well, but mainly they just drilled into our skulls that you do not want credit card debt.

It was an okay class... Not very interesting by any means, but I think it helped, because I have yet to even want a credit card, although I should probably get one.

[StacyT]

I think high school is much too late to begin teaching finance. It should be a regular ongoing subject like language, science, or math - starting in kindergarten!

[Jason Vincion]

I chose to take classes on finance (called Academy of Finance) during my junior and senior years of high school, and they focused on lots of important subjects such as staying out of debt, how to write a check, how to do your taxes, how the stock market works, how to balance accounts, and lots of other things pertaining to finance.

I found them to be the most useful classes in high school by far, and wondered why they were merely electives when this was useful information that everyone could benefit from. It should definitely be taught in high school, though the basic tenets of saving money could be espoused to younger children in order to aim them on the right track towards financial stability and abundance.

[Mounds]

Wow, I find it really intriguing that the people who had access to personal finance education found it quite useful! Now I'm surprised that it's not offered more often.
Still not exactly sure on the laws here but I'd love to teach this kind of stuff. I don't really want to become a financial adviser to do it.

-Tim

[SnerpGoodWord]

I think this would work better as a class than as a guest speaker sort of thing. There's enough material to fill up at least a 1-semester 5 credit class while staying well within the realm of personal finance. Things like:

- basic interest rate math
- consumer debt
- budgeting & automation
- college decisions
--- school loans
--- expected income by education level and major
--- costs of different schools and expected income by school
- transportation/car costs
--- buy vs. rent vs. used
--- public transit
- rental contracts
- credit score

And that doesn't touch the mortgage and retirement math that makes up a lot of adult personal finance, or anything related to high finance.