<p>It is amazing how few kids (and some adults) know how to balance a check book. They have no idea what compound interest is or how it works. HS students should be taught about interest rates as it relates to credit cards, savings, mortgages, etc. They should know about a budget and how to create a personal budget that has all the expected expenses adding up to (or less than) the amount of money that they are anticipating receiving after taxes.
HS should devote one semester (senior year) to Personal Finance.</p>
<p>S covered some of this in his senior (half year) economics course. D took a full year of Intro to Business as a sophomore. I agree that it’s good to get it in there somewhere.</p>
<p>I can think of several ways to fit in personal finance instruction.</p>
<p>Unless a senior has problems, he or she has passed all the state required testing by senior year. The “testing days” would be great for a personal finance class. The PSAT morning could be used as a mini-seminar. Almost none of the seniors have finals, so those days could be used, also.</p>
<p>DS took a college personal finance course as an elective. He said it was one of the BEST courses he ever took…and strongly feels it should be require of all college students.</p>
<p>Percentages are taught around fourth or fifth grade so doing interest rate problems should be part of math classes in that area and afterwards. A MathCounts program (8th grade) should do a decent problem of providing background with interest rate problems.</p>
<p>Learning about compounding is harder as is understanding the Net Present Value of an income stream. That’s typically seen in an intro finance course but it can be taught to high-school kids with a solid background in algebra. I think that the “solid background in algebra” is a problem.</p>
<p>I taught the kids lots of stuff about finance and economics when they were in their teens. I assume that some of it stuck. I would hold regular discussions at the dinner table about world economic events, companies, central banks, trading and politics and political impacts on economics. I had my son learn about technical analysis when he was 13 and gave him $25K to play with in the stock market. Daughter showed no interest though she is now executing orders for me in two of my accounts.</p>
<p>With a checkbook, a good way to learn is to use one. Same thing with credit cards.</p>
<p>A one semester Economics and Personal Finance course became a requirement here for this years’ HS freshman. While I like the idea in theory, it is very difficult for many students (especially those in special magnet or vocational programs) to fit this in. In many cases it will be electives/arts courses that will be dropped. </p>
<p>So, I think Missypie’s idea is great. Our schools have some “off” time when this could be done.</p>
<p>This is a great idea. It should be a required course in HS. If they wait till college it’s a little late as some of them might have already got a huge loan without knowing its impact on their lives and perhaps their parents’ lives.</p>
<p>Our school had such a course, mandatory for eighth graders. Then came the budget cuts and it went into the same dustbin with the rest of the family & consumer science program.</p>
<p>I don’t think they taught all these back 30 years ago.
I wonder if people still balance their checkbook. I certainly don’t anymore.</p>
<p>Even more than personal finance, I believe the normal child development should be taught in high school. I truly believe that if more parents understand what their young children can/cannot do, the abuse rate would go down significantly.</p>
<p>This could be included in other classes.</p>
<p>This should absolutely not be a new class.</p>
<p>As an IB student, you have to take 7 IB classes. What if you want to take a music ensemble? You have to drop the music ensemble in order to take a “personal finance” class that covers elementary school mathematics like addition and subtraction? Come on, that is ridiculous. Band programs across the county where I live fought very hard to keep a rule like this from being put into place in VA.</p>
<p>Perhaps the class could be required for people who do not take 4 other years of high school math. Making a mandatory class will create a class with people who can’t add, combined with top 50 college type students that would otherwise never be in the same classroom. Schools should not be in the business of wasting students’ time.</p>
<p>^ While I agree it can and should be incorporated into the existing curriculum (I honestly can’t imagine why it would require an entire semester of material), you seem to be confusing basic math knowledge and personal finance. One requires the other but these are not interchangeable knowledge sets. I only wish.</p>
<p>I’m a big fan of requiring a real economics course in highschool. Not some lame watered-down course, but something substantial that includes micro and macro. It is surely as important as a lot of other courses students are required to take.</p>
<p>The state of TN requires a 1 semester personal finance class beginning with the graduating class of 2013. D2 took it last year to get it out of the way. I think it’s a fantastic idea and I thought that the materials they covered will be very useful in the real world.</p>
<p>NY doesn’t require it (afaik) but I did! All of mine were required to take it as a 1 semester elective and it worked out nicely as they had to take a certain number of elective credits anyway. My kids are definely more financially savvy than many of their friends who took other electives, but that’s to the credit of the instructor. I certainly could have taught them everything they learned (and we probably discussed most of it around the dinner table anyway) but things like debt management, budgeting, etc. seem to “sink in” when they come from an outside source. With the number of young people whose parents are lacking in financial management skills and the alarming number who bury themselves in debt before age 25, I think this is worth making a requirement…even if it means postponing another college-level class until you actually get to college!</p>
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<p>The state of Texas requires a semester of Economics in 12th grade. My kids took AP Econ (macro, I think) and learned nothing about personal finance.</p>
<p>S1 took it as a semester class in high school and really enjoyed the course. It covered topics such as bank accounts/check book balancing, credit card pitfalls, apartment rental agreements, loans, car purchases and insurance.</p>
<p>S2 did not have an open time slot because of AP’s and two languages. I do not feel that advanced Econ and math are a substitute for personal finance.</p>
<p>It’s a half-credit graduation requirement where we live:
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<p>A consumer economics course is required in IL to graduate high school.</p>
<p>^ Not a full course; nine weeks of instruction, which may be incorporated into another course.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.isbe.state.il.us/news/pdf/grad_require.pdf[/url]”>http://www.isbe.state.il.us/news/pdf/grad_require.pdf</a></p>
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<p>I disagree. “I have $500, can I buy X? If I buy X, that means I can’t buy Y, is it worth it?” That is addition and subtraction. Compound interest perhaps reaches into middle school math.</p>