Schools Teaching Finances?

[TGS]

Do the schools in your area teach basic finances to kids? I'm not talking "enthusiast" level stuff like getting them to differentiate between SPAXX vs SPRXX MMFs, but basic stuff like how to manage a budget, understand what compound interest is and why it's advantageous to save early, the crushing reality of high interest loans/credit cards, understanding the basics for retirement planning and earning work credits for SSA benefits, etc.

Just curious. This has come up a couple times in conversations with immigrant friends/my S.O. who come from a culture where even the lower middle class have a strong habit of saving money and general financial responsibility that is a complete 180* from the situation that the average American is in, where 57% of Americans can't even afford a $1000 emergency, median per capita consumer debt is in the tens of thousands, the typical 50 year old hasn't saved anything meaningful for retirement, and even half of Americans earning six figures are living paycheck-to-paycheck (with that number being 2/3rds for people earning $50k-$99k).

[bofe954]

My daughter is in 10th grade and takes "Personal Finance". I haven't sat down and discussed it yet with her to figure out exactly what they have been telling her, and it is an elective.

I learned a lot of that kind of thing from my dad over time and plan on teaching her, too. She has a job and a checking account/debit card now.

[Duces Tecum]

Try searching for Personal Finance at KahnAcademy.org or Coursera.org.


Duces

[JRB]

Do the schools in your area teach basic finances to kids? I'm not talking "enthusiast" level stuff like getting them to differentiate between SPAXX vs SPRXX MMFs, but basic stuff like how to manage a budget, understand what compound interest is and why it's advantageous to save early, the crushing reality of high interest loans/credit cards, understanding the basics for retirement planning and earning work credits for SSA benefits, etc.

Just curious. This has come up a couple times in conversations with immigrant friends/my S.O. who come from a culture where even the lower middle class have a strong habit of saving money and general financial responsibility that is a complete 180* from the situation that the average American is in, where 57% of Americans can't even afford a $1000 emergency, median per capita consumer debt is in the tens of thousands, the typical 50 year old hasn't saved anything meaningful for retirement, and even half of Americans earning six figures are living paycheck-to-paycheck (with that number being 2/3rds for people earning $50k-$99k).

My sister was a 6th Grade math teacher in a Title I school(aka, very poor district) for 7 or 8 years.

In the last week of her class every year, she'd teach 'The Game of Life'. Kids were assigned a notional yearly income based on their grades in the class; a 100% average got $100k, and a 60% (barely passing D average) got $20k as I recall, with the value interpolated in between those two for grades in-between.

Day 1, she'd explain rent and mortgages (simplified of course) and she'd have kids on tablets look up where they'd live, reading listings for houses/apartments etc and then shown who could really afford what.
Day 2 was cars, and buying an old car and having to fix it vs paying a high monthly payment for a fancy new car, and how car payments and interest was calculated, including how much more it cost to shop by payment alone, and it was time/interest rate that really crushed them. By day #2 the kids with C's and D's were grumpy and hating life.
Day 3 was taxes.
Day 4 was credit cards and student loans.
Day 5 was vacations and what fun you could have with the leftover money (if they had any).

She tells me this week blew her kids' minds and actually kept some real attention in that last week of classes, when they're usually bouncing off the walls.
Many of her students started that week having no idea you had to pay back a loan, or that getting something on payments would cost more than paying for it in full.
She also said that by day 3 every year, she'd have at least one parent come see her after school for help with their own finances. She ended up teaching how interest rates work and could be calculated to dozens of grown adults. Another factor about how debt and success and upward movement in society can be more challenging than most people think.

Naturally, being a Title I school, some administrator decided they needed to add more lessons to the year and that axed her classroom time for 'the game of life'. She moved on to a technology/facilitation position in the elementary school her own son attends not long after.
I'd like to believe that any administrator who saw lesson plans for that week would have insisted on adding it to the formal curriculum.... but I've met and talked to some of those school administrators over the years, so I really can't say I'm surprised that some mish-mash of pre-algebra was more important to them.

[TGS]

My sister was a 6th Grade math teacher in a Title I school(aka, very poor district) for 7 or 8 years.

Geez, that's a heavy class for a 6th grader! We had something similar to that when I was in high school, though it was a dedicated class for a semester. It was one of the options you could take instead of home-ec, that sort of thing.

[JRB]

Geez, that's a heavy class for a 6th grader! We had something similar to that when I was in high school, though it was a dedicated class for a semester. It was one of the options you could take instead of home-ec, that sort of thing.

You're not the first to say that's a heavy class for a 6th grader, but my sister was very passionate about adding meaningful value to those kids with the time she had.

She did a great job of simplifying the math involved, it never got more complicated than compound interest. The real value in the lesson, she felt, was in teaching the kids that having to pay for something over time was always more expensive than paying in full up front, and the importance of doing well in school so you could better provide for your families and what you wanted to do in life.

[HeavyDuty]

Our kids have a short personal financial literacy unit this year in math class, just the basics that will be built on in the next few years. They are in sixth grade AP math.

The high school where my wife teaches has replaced economics for non-advanced kids with personal financial literacy.

[0ddl0t]

Not in the curriculum here, but absolutely should be (along with first aid and, imo, firearm safety).

[shootist26]

Do the schools in your area teach basic finances to kids? I'm not talking "enthusiast" level stuff like getting them to differentiate between SPAXX vs SPRXX MMFs, but basic stuff like how to manage a budget, understand what compound interest is and why it's advantageous to save early, the crushing reality of high interest loans/credit cards, understanding the basics for retirement planning and earning work credits for SSA benefits, etc.

Just curious. This has come up a couple times in conversations with immigrant friends/my S.O. who come from a culture where even the lower middle class have a strong habit of saving money and general financial responsibility that is a complete 180* from the situation that the average American is in, where 57% of Americans can't even afford a $1000 emergency, median per capita consumer debt is in the tens of thousands, the typical 50 year old hasn't saved anything meaningful for retirement, and even half of Americans earning six figures are living paycheck-to-paycheck (with that number being 2/3rds for people earning $50k-$99k).

Very important to learn, but the cynic in me is not optimistic about learning it in school. Hard to relate topics such as taxes/savings/investing to already uninterested students when 99% of them don't even have a job. Also, I would bet that an inordinate amount of time is spent learning useless/out-of-date things like balancing a checkbook by hand

I'm big on investing and personal finance, but the good foundational habits were all learned through my parents. My parents were immigrants and placed a great deal of importance on saving and responsible investing (passively managed index funds, diversified mutual funds, dividend stocks, bond ladders, CDs only...nothing crazy or hyped up)

[Duelist]

Yes, my wife teaches that as a two semester senior math class at her high school, and it is a two semester senior math class at the high school I work at as well.

Economics is a graduation requirement in this state.