Few parents of students in elementary school, high school, or college would disagree if you said; We need to teach basic economics and financial literacy as required parts of our educational system, and yet don’t we? Well, that was the question that was recently posed in our expert group. What can we teach children?
How about balancing a checkbook, calculating simple interest and amortization, and personal budgeting and credit card debt problems? What about student loan offsets for college tuition? Is that a taboo? Sorry, but why not, why should there be something forbidden? Let’s talk, shall we?
You see, one type of think tank agreed with me, stating that they liked the principle and were surprised that it wasn’t part of the curriculum. Of course, he also told me that my ideas of “balancing a checkbook” were a bit archaic; “Really? How many people still use checks? They haven’t written one in this decade.”
Well, I recognize that point, still the principles of looking at a bank statement are valuable. Interestingly, I’ve only written a handful of checks this year, now that I think about it.
Another couple of points, in the US, we see 1.3 trillion dollars in outstanding tuition debt, 40% for 90 days on the backside, most of those students will eventually die, worse either way they are economically enslaved since that Debt cannot be written off by bankruptcy, at least not yet, the Democrats want to forgive and eventually give free college tuition, yet those loans were taken recklessly.
Another challenge Auto loans, zero interest, zero payments until next year, and loans for those with very bad credit, that is another sign of poor decision making. What if those people had better knowledge about interest, loans, and money?
When people took out ARM home loans in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, many said they didn’t understand what they were signing. Maybe they did, but they used that as an excuse, either way, they should have known what they were signing up for and getting into.
Why are we in such a rush to financially enslave the next generation with debt? They got out of college and can’t buy a car, start a business, or buy a home, how does that help our economy move forward? Something is wrong, and it is something that we can fix simply by teaching financial literacy, which is as important to success in life as math, science, reading, and writing. Please consider this.
