[frellus]

What kids really need is a mandatory personal finance class at the High School level. This would teach them how to handle money, debt, spending, budgeting and general financial health.

Nothing would help the next generation more, even above giving them seed investment money, than helping them avoid the pitfalls which are just waiting for them around every corner.

My daughter took an elective for this in HS, and every day would come home and say how much she was learning and how empowered she felt about money afterwards.

[throw0101a]

> What kids really need is a mandatory personal finance class at the High School level. This would teach them how to handle money, debt, spending, budgeting and general financial health.

Most of us are completely clueless in high school and the lessons will be completely forgotten. (Though I'm happy my province, Ontario, started doing this a few years ago.)

[frellus]

That is awesome Ontario is doing that. it will make a difference.

I agree that most of us get out of high school clueless, both because of age/maturity but also because schools are not teaching people HOW to think, they're teaching WHAT to think.

Two areas of knowledge would revolutionize the system, and obviously would never happen:

* critical reasoning -- this is I bought my kids a book on cognitive biases and how to think through problems and fallacies in thinking

* curiosity -- this is where AI would help in schools, but unfortunately teachers are pushing kids away from using AI in general, let alone using it as a tool to be curious and explore knowledge and reasoning about a subject

I can only conclude that these things are not inherently in the public school system on purpose to keep the population dumb and docile. I hate thinking that, but it's the only conclusion I can come to. Someone(s) wants our children to be dumb, dependent and easily manipulated in their thinking.

*

[reaperducer]

What kids really need is a mandatory personal finance class at the High School level. This would teach them how to handle money, debt, spending, budgeting and general financial health.

In the U.S., we had this for about 50 years, but was mostly gone by the mid-1980's. It was part of a class called Home Economics.

In some schools it was mandatory for everyone. In other schools, it was for girls only because at the time it started, it was usual for women to do the household finances.

The course often also included things like cooking, cleaning, and sewing. What people today learn from online "life hacks."

I'm glad I learned all of those skills in high school. I only rarely need to darn my socks, but the knots I learned translate to fishing and other needs.

It was also where I learned typing.

[frellus]

Absolutely. My wife is Japanese, and they still teach "home economics" there (and no, it's not sexist .. both boys and girls have to attend classes). They learn the following, basically life skills:

* proper nutritional eating

* balancing a budget (saving, spending)

* simple skills like how to stitch and sew their clothes when there is a hole or button needs to be fixed

I looked at their text books and my jaw hit the floor. All up to date, amazing pictures and instructions, little anime characters teaching life skills in a fun way. I was blown away, it was both practical and fun.

My daughter got a class like this in her charter school, they learned how to change a tire for a car and such. She absolutely loved it. They ran scenarios like, "if you made $<x> amount of money per year, and you want to live around $<y> how could you do it?", and she learned how she would get a roommate, how to split rent effectively and make a monthly budget.

[etrautmann]

My middle school home ec class was completely worthless “skills” that weren’t worth the opportunity cost of the time, but a finance class would have been.

[foolinaround]

Are there good suggestions for a personal finance class at the high school level that one can take online?

[rich_sasha]

I wonder if this would very quickly get politicised.

Because what would you teach in these classes? I guess you'd start with, avoid debt, spend according to your means etc.

Next minute some politician will be concerned voters take it too seriously and start judging them by their ability to stick to budgets. Nononono. Let's make that curriculum less revolutionary.

Then I suppose there's corporate interest too. Surely spending withing your means is un-American? Let's include in the lessons stuff about spreading the cost of your purchase over 3 years on a credit card. And did you know Visa, our educational partner, offers you a student credit card with just 280% annual interest and 0.001% cashback, just to get you to dip your toes in the world of crippling debt? I mean, sustainable personal finance. And if that all gets too much, here's some opioid painkillers. There, much better.

[frellus]

We need to stop thinking like this for sure. Good advice is good advice, regardless of where it comes from.

The key lesson kids need to learn is to avoid debt and live within their means. Now-a-days every business has decided there is more revenue in pushing their individual debt platforms rather than their products. Go into the Gap, and the staff is heavily incentivized on pushing "Gap Cards", but not on actual product sales.

I won't get into a religious debate on if all debt is bad, but it is a fact that without financial awareness this is the #1 problem facing households today, spending above their means and having "bad" debt dragging down their wealth building.

At an early age I pointed out to my kids, as we went through a store cashier, the signs about "get a <x> card for savings" and brainwashed them that those are traps. They are now in college, everything is cash flowed, and they will not have a credit card in their name (in fact their credit is locked).

"But how will they be able to afford a house and get a loan if they don't have a credit score?!" -- by saving and investing their money instead of spending it with pieces of plastic. Loans can be given with manual underwriting. Cars can be bought with cash following simple rules.

Aside from all that though, just teaching AWARENESS and intentionality from a personal finance class will carry on beyond the class. Having awareness of spending (i.e. "Can I afford this?"), followed by intentionality ("I'll save $500 for the next three months and then buy it, instead of paying payments. I can wait!"), followed by planning (i.e. budgeting), and you have someone who is going to be successful and build wealth.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

They could teach things like how credit cards, car and personal loans, and mortgages work. That the 'monthly payment' is not the only important piece of information. How tax brackets worth, how investments work, what bonds and stocks are. And so on and so on. None of this was taught when I was in high school, yet we're all expected to know these things to navigate life in the modern world.

I suspect ignorance is desired. Financially illiterate people are more profitable.

[frellus]

> I suspect ignorance is desired. Financially illiterate people are more profitable.

Spot on, my friend. This is the only conclusion I've come to after watching my kids go through the school system.

[latchkey]

This should just be online content, translated into as many languages as possible, and everyone on the planet should have free access to it.

[bokohut]

Some U.S. States have moved on this, such as Ohio, yet it does not get the coverage and press it deserves. Consider how much the debt driven capitalism machine would change if we force educated our up and coming young adults to understand how finances function. Very few think in time in our perceived as instant world and the social cost of this has only just begun.