# Why is personal finance so absent from education? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 14, 2010, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072 "2010-06-14T00:44:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/21 "2010-06-14T04:23:42Z")
Maybe it’s the school you’re going to. Required classes for my Associates degree actually covered personal finance pretty well. Business Math, and College Success and Portfolio Writing, covered the technical and behavioral aspects of successful personal finance, among other things. Just taking a quick glance at the college catalog Small Business Management also covers personal finance. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/22 "2010-06-14T04:36:30Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > And why not? I would argue that maybe they should, at least when it comes to something that will literally make or break your entire life and that _everyone_ has to deal with. I think education is broader and deeper than training. Training is situation-specific, while education gives you the skills to deal with all the permutations. Assuming it’s a good enough education, which it obviously isn’t much of the time. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/23 "2010-06-14T04:53:19Z")
In the day parents taught personal finance. And we needed them to do so as we had much less access to information than today’s teens do. It amazes me that in the age of the internet any child who can read is unable to educate himself on constructive financial habits. Our schools are on overload these days with subject matter which used to be covered in the family setting. And our American kids are substandard statistically in the areas which will continue to make the country competitive with other nations. For anyone under eighteen common sense basics could apply: Don’t spend more than you have, pay your credit card off at the end of each month, set aside some of your earnings for savings each payday. For anything more complicated do your research instead of playing video games or hanging out. And spend your school time improving your science, math and communication skills. If you need to learn how to balance your account chances are good anyone at your bank would be willing to give you instruction. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/24 "2010-06-14T10:59:08Z")
My high school had a math class to teach these things. It was called “Consumer Math” and taught people things like balancing a checkbook and so on. **However** , it was a math class that was only approved for people everyone knew were unlikely to go to college. If you intended to go to college you were supposed to take the higher math classes instead. Because, you know, college kids are great at learning how to manage their finances on their own. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/25 "2010-06-14T11:52:52Z")
I’m a high school economics teacher, so I am exactly the bad guy in this situation. I don’t teach personal finance because my kids and my administration (and my ego) all want a high pass rate on the AP exam, and I don’t have enough time to give them that and teach personal finance. If I taught a regular economics class, I would–in fact, I think the curriculum even includes such a unit–but I don’t, so I don’t. I think that when personal finance is offered as a separate class, an elective, people tend to put it in the home ec ghetto and it’s taken only by kids who don’t bother to put down any electives and get randomly shoved into classes. There is a huge bias against anything that smells even a little of home economics, which is a shame: kids need to learn an awful lot of those things, not just the budgeting stuff. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/26 "2010-06-14T12:10:13Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > So that brings me to the question of: why is it this way? Is it a big conspiracy by banks and corporations because they profit from having relatively uneducated consumers? Is it deemed too “socialist” and meddling for schools to attempt to influence the young’s spending and saving habits? Some other reason? Banks and corporation? :dubious: No. Corporate America does not give a shit about K-12. Corporations do spend a great deal of time and money working with good colleges in designing programs to help create and recruit the sort of people they would want to hire. School programs are designed by local, state and Federal government. I wouldn’t call it a conspiracy, but your entire education up until you graduate and go off to college basically consists of tales of the heroic efforts of the government in shaping history. I would guess that people who create school curriculum simply just don’t think about stuff like personal finance as something that should be taught. > [@wonder9](#): > > GIVE ME A BREAK! As a teacher, I have to ask, per usual, when during the day this should be taught, why it should be taught by teachers and what would you have us give up teaching in order to fit it in? We teach math, science, language arts, social studies, computer skills, social skills, and physical education. We also do counseling, dental screening, vision screening and vocational training. We have kids for a total of about 5.5 instructional hours during the days when you add up how much time is spent in transit between classes, bathroom breaks, lunch breaks and getting kids in and out of the building. You can make a strong case for incorporating financial education into the curriculum through math or social studies but the fact remains…we have limited time, limited resources and unlimited demands on us. So, what’s your solution to this? When I was in high school in the 80s, we had to take classes like “Home Economics”. How about teaching some actual home economics instead how to bake a cake and other bullshit? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/27 "2010-06-14T16:13:00Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > Now I was lucky to have parents who have a pretty good handle on their finances and at least imparted to me some of the very basic wisdoms about things such as the miracles of compound interest, the dangers of debt (and what kind of debt is worse than other kinds and why), how taxes work, etc. It’s not clear to me what exactly you would have taught. You mention debt, compound interest, and taxes. Someone else mentioned balancing a checkbook. Sounds good, but do you want to make a whole course out of this? What do you plan on doing for the other 179 school days in the year? ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/28 "2010-06-14T16:59:29Z")
> [@dangermom](#): > > I thought most high schools did cover that. I went to a rotten high school, but everyone was required to take economics, and half of that was personal finance stuff. We got it as well, several times. But there are a few things that contribute to it not being taught: 1. The time component…so much to teach so little time. 2. It used to be part of home ec in a lot of schools - that’s been dropped for more reading/riting and rithmatic. 3. Teaching it involves a value judgment - saving good, credit card debt is bad. Parents don’t like it when their kids are taught values they themselves don’t hold. Teaching personal finance opens parents to their kids asking harder questions than the DARE program does, or sex ed, or all that eating right in health. I’m pro personal finance being taught. And I suspect the best way to get it taught (at least in our district) is to offer it as “enrichment” coursework - before or after school for half an hour once a week taught by a parent volunteer (our kids get chess club and math club this way). ---
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/29 "2010-06-14T17:35:15Z")
To those teachers who do teach finance in some way or another, where do you find your curricula? Obviously there are many companies that specialize in math/science/history textbooks and materials. Are there any in finance? Because if you have to basically make up you own curricula, that’s a big hinderance. Plus to all those who wonder why they just don’t cut back on math or foreign language, remember those subjects are often mandated by state education boards and college admissions departments. ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/30 "2010-06-14T17:42:15Z")
When I was in high school they taught these basic life skills - in the “slow” classes. They had a basic math class (business math?) that covered writing checks, calculating interest even working a cash register I think. Classs like that and home ec. and shop didn’t get a lot of respect and nobody took them (well, except for me) if they were working toward college. These days all I ever hear is what high schools DON’T have. Why doesn’t this school have an IB program, or an honors program, or more band uniforms or a bigger stadium? All the people asking those questions are the go-getters whose children are headed for college and beyond. There are lots of vocational education programs but they get very little money and no respect. My son’s school constantly got low ratings for their SAT and SOL scores, because they had a strong voTech program that attracted student who were not college bound. Those low scores translated into less money and better students being drawn away to magnet schools. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/31 "2010-06-14T17:50:14Z")
When I was in high school in the early 80s, there was a required one-quarter course called Consumer Economics. I don’t remember much about what it covered. What **should** a personal finance course cover? “Don’t spend more than you have/earn,” obviously, but that takes like two minutes, and should be common sense anyway. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/32 "2010-06-14T17:52:07Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > It’s not clear to me what exactly you would have taught. You mention debt, compound interest, and taxes. Someone else mentioned balancing a checkbook. Sounds good, but do you want to make a whole course out of this? What do you plan on doing for the other 179 school days in the year? So why can’t personal finance be part of math/algebra? Compound interest, present value, mortgages all fit in well with algebra. My personal belief is that the ruling class want HS education dumbed down as much as possible-it creates a group of ignorant citizens who are prey for corrupt politicians. It also justifies higher and higher budgets for education and remedial education. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/33 "2010-06-14T18:15:50Z")
> [@installLSC](#): > > Plus to all those who wonder why they just don’t cut back on math or foreign language, remember those subjects are often mandated by state education boards and college admissions departments. And without math, what use would a personal finance class be anyway? My gut feeling is that personal finance classes wouldn’t be that useful in high school anyway. IMHO, most people are bad at personal finance not because they don’t know how to be good at it, it’s because they don’t want to be good at it. “We can save up $X now and have $X+10% in three years…or we can go out and buy a big-screen TV.” No amount of high school finance classes in the world are going to make people who picked option #2 be better at saving money. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/34 "2010-06-14T18:26:15Z")
Half of my senior Econ. class is given over to personal finance. I subvert the curriculum whenever I can. We cover budgeting, credit cards, student loans, taxes, all that sexy stuff. In fact, the students spend a day a week the entire semester running a “Life Simulation” exercise wherein I fuck with them mightily. The Deck Of Disasters can be a cruel bitch sometimes. If they get pregnant in the exercise they have to carry a sack of flour around all day, to every class. I really lay on the evil, just to give them the vague notion that Life isn’t fair, and the world is really out to get you. Every year, my evaluations come back with rave reviews and thanks for the eye-opener. It also lets be openly Evil, so it’s a win-win. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/35 "2010-06-14T18:53:48Z")
In our culture, finances are a sensitive subject, like sex in many ways. You don’t ask people how much money they make. A lot of us don’t know how much even our parents or siblings have in their bank accounts, and would never dream of asking such a thing. Finances are also something that people tend to be judgmental about. Say you had a teenage child. Would you be comfortable with your (imaginary or real) child asking you about your income and budget and sharing that information with others at their school? I’d guess that most people would not. A personal finance class would be more effective with some real examples, but most people probably wouldn’t like to be used as such an example. > [@Tethered Kite](#): > > In the day parents taught personal finance. They still do. Some of them even use words to do so. The problem is when the parents set a bad example for the kids. Not all those people who are up to their eyeballs in debt are childless, you know. I’d like to see a personal finance class in schools so that the children of the people who are in debt and living beyond their means can get a better example. Kind of like we have sex ed because there are parents who won’t tell their kids what they need to know about sex. > [@](#): > > It amazes me that in the age of the internet any child who can read is unable to educate himself on constructive financial habits. It’s pretty easy to learn some bad financial habits from all the information out there, too. My credit card company regularly tells me how I can do stuff like get stuff now and pay later with those “convenience checks” they send me. There’s still a lot of information on stuff like house flipping out there. Random Googling or reading random books on finances isn’t necessarily going to give someone good financial advice. > [@shiftless](#): > > When I was in high school they taught these basic life skills - in the “slow” classes. This is a problem. A lot of people assume that personal finance is “just math”, or that anyone who can do the requisite math can budget and live within their means. I say that it’s clear from looking around that this isn’t the case. Anybody who can use Google can find a compound interest calculator. You don’t even have to know the formula or do any arithmetic to use it. So why are there still people who run up huge amounts of credit card debt? Clearly, people not knowing the formula for compound interest or not being able to plug numbers into it isn’t the problem here. > [@msmith537](#): > > When I was in high school in the 80s, we had to take classes like “Home Economics”. How about teaching some actual home economics instead how to bake a cake and other bullshit? I think we should replace sewing in home economics classes with personal finance. Most people are not going to be making clothes for themselves or others, since you can buy ready-made clothes so cheap now. Repairing clothes is less important for the same reason. I had a sewing unit in middle-school home economics, and I think that would have been a good place for personal finance instead. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/36 "2010-06-14T19:06:06Z")
My high school did teach personal finance. It was part of the course “General Math” which was used by non-college-bound students to fulfill their second year of math requirement. It taught things like balancing a checkbook, how interest works, how mortgages work, how to calculate the best price based on percent discounts, etc. All the typical ways many people will need to use math in real world. ---
**Author:** ![Long\_Time\_First\_Time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@Long\_Time\_First\_Time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Long_Time_First_Time)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/37 "2010-06-14T19:11:10Z")
As mentioned above, many school districts, including the one my kids went to, do have some type of individual finance courses. The reason why it’s not taught more widely, and is more accepted, IMHO, is that the NEED for teaching this is a relatively new thing, and school curricula are incredibly conservative and slow to change. Back 20 years ago - you couldn’t get in trouble with a mortgage. The bank wouldn’t lend you more money than the local banker thought you could pay. Back in my parent’s day you couldn’t go into credit card debt - there wasn’t such a thing as Visa or Mastercard. If you had the cash you could spend it. If not, too bad. The only thing you could _Do_ from a personal finance perspective was balance a check book. The new reality of consumers being able to get themselves in crippling debt is just one of the newer things coming down the pike that the educational system as a whole has adapted to slowly or poorly. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/38 "2010-06-14T19:29:08Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > This is a problem. A lot of people assume that personal finance is “just math”, or that anyone who can do the requisite math can budget and live within their means. I say that it’s clear from looking around that this isn’t the case. Anybody who can use Google can find a compound interest calculator. You don’t even have to know the formula or do any arithmetic to use it. So why are there still people who run up huge amounts of credit card debt? Clearly, people not knowing the formula for compound interest or not being able to plug numbers into it isn’t the problem here. That’s the problem. You can’t really create a class that is going to change people’s sense of entitlement or their fantasy that their income will eventually increase to where they can afford to pay off their ridiculous debt. People just think they deserve to have anything they want. They also tend to overestimate how successful they will be in the future, relative to their desired lifestyle. > [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > I think we should replace sewing in home economics classes with personal finance. Most people are not going to be making clothes for themselves or others, since you can buy ready-made clothes so cheap now. Repairing clothes is less important for the same reason. I had a sewing unit in middle-school home economics, and I think that would have been a good place for personal finance instead. Exactly. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/39 "2010-06-14T19:41:06Z")
Economics is required in Florida high schools, but the amount of information relating to personal finance was _tiny._ ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072/40 "2010-06-14T19:59:10Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > That’s the problem. You can’t really create a class that is going to change people’s sense of entitlement or their fantasy that their income will eventually increase to where they can afford to pay off their ridiculous debt. People just think they deserve to have anything they want. They also tend to overestimate how successful they will be in the future, relative to their desired lifestyle. You also have the same problem that you have with teaching healthy eating and safe sex. Spending as much as you can get from credit cards, home equity loans, and the like is just more fun for most people than living within their means is. Just like junk food is tastier and more convenient than healthy food, and having lots of sex without worrying about diseases or pregnancy is more fun than having safer sex. We have sex ed for the kids whose parents can’t or won’t set good examples and talk to them about sex. We have health classes for the kids whose parents can’t or won’t teach them about healthy foods. There are a lot of parents who can’t or won’t set a good example for their kids in regards to personal finance, too. We’ve tried leaving personal finance education up to the parents, or just letting the smarter kids figure it out themselves. It isn’t working. > [@silenus](#): > > Half of my senior Econ. class is given over to personal finance. I subvert the curriculum whenever I can. We cover budgeting, credit cards, student loans, taxes, all that sexy stuff. In fact, the students spend a day a week the entire semester running a “Life Simulation” exercise wherein I fuck with them mightily. The Deck Of Disasters can be a cruel bitch sometimes. If they get pregnant in the exercise they have to carry a sack of flour around all day, to every class. I really lay on the evil, just to give them the vague notion that Life isn’t fair, and the world is really out to get you. I wish more schools did something like this. I’m picturing the Deck of Disasters looking something like a tarot card deck. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-personal-finance-so-absent-from-education/543072.md?page=3)