I would hate if my kid had to take some personal finances class in HS. I can see it being elective class, but mandatory, thank you, do not need it! there is plenty of brainwashing going on at all levels of education, I do not want to spend additional resources on this activity. Finances of each family are different as they are based of the specific family values and principals.
@MiamiDAP Good point I am all for smaller government, but learning/understanding that we all have financial choices/consequences might be healthy …
Just the student loan debacle itself is reason enough to make finance classes mandatory.
No one is telling them HOW to spend their money.
My kids did the Dave Ramsey homeschool curriculum. IMHO the best thing to come out of it was how to avoid car payments. He also covers budgeting pretty extensively, and he illuminates the concept of compound interest.
“Just the student loan debacle itself is reason enough to make finance classes mandatory.” - Saying to all families: " Do what I tell you to do because it make sense to ME" is not a right approach, considering (just as one example) that in the Midwest, the mindset is that if a kid worked hard and is up to the Merit scholarships, then that is what the family is pursuing. These kids are not going to deal with “loan debacles”, they worked way too hard to avoid them and they make smart decisions not to take an “Ivy / Elite” bate either. They already “took care” of their family finances on their own without any kind of classes.
As I said, if anybody wants to take a class, do it, but do not make it mandatory for all across, There are kids who much rather take college classes while in HS then the family finance class. We should not exercise some dictatorial rules over them. They deserve much better than that!
Would one personal finance class be significant compared to one’s tendency toward frugality versus spendiness, perhaps influenced by years of parental examples?
At the girls’ school there’s a mandatory semester of “gov” and a mandatory semester of “econ”. You’d think in that semester of econ they could teach them about budgeting, credit card debt, etc.
We teach our kids about finances, but I wasn’t taught (and was one of those kids who signed up for all the credit cards on campus because I thought it was free money way back in the day), and I suspect a lot of other kids aren’t being taught, based on some hair-raising conversations I’ve had a social events with parents who are blithely digging their kids into 6 figures of debt while groaning under it themselves.
Even if it’s just like learning how to budget using an app like Toshl or Mint or Microsoft Money (which is defunct, but we’re still using it, lol).
…somehow we survived without using any app’s and we are planning to continue in the same fashion…we never had any family finance class and doing just fine without, our adult kids never had any such class either and we did not teach them at all and they are also doing just fine…Teach them if you want, but leave the others alone!
@MiamiDAP So it might be ok to have the class as an elective?..for those who think it is a good idea.
“would one personal finance class be significant compared to one’s tendency toward frugality versus spendiness, perhaps influenced by years of parental examples?”
What are you suggesting? Are you saying why bother because kids take their cue from parents?
I generally don’t like government mandates, but any kid getting free lunch should be required to take a class like that before they graduate HS. Taxpayers are paying for those free lunches, yet the cycle seems to continue too often.
And for the record, I am strongly in favor of the school lunch program - I hate to see kids hungry because of poor choices or family circumstances.
“but any kid getting free lunch should be required to take a class like that before they graduate HS. Taxpayers are paying for those free lunches, yet the cycle seems to continue too often.” The logic used here is too symplisitic. The cycle continues too often due to lack of opportunities/hope/positive examples not because the students don’t know how to set up an IRA or balance a checkbook. 8-|
A short finance class wouldn’t hurt anyone and well help most. It is actually a requirement in my state. I know a lot of families not receiving subsidized lunches who still don’t manage their finances well.
Heck, let’s take it a step further. Anyone applying for need based aid for college should be required to take a finance course before they have children of their own. 
My mom bought an apartment building with my dad. My dad died. Now the basis of the building is the current market value. This means no capital gains tax even though there were capital gains. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are saved in taxes. This board skews wealthy so I know many posters understand what I am saying.
So…forget free lunches…my mom is getting free years. Maybe she should be required to take a class.
I think every student should take a finance class before they graduate high school. Even students from wealthy families should take a finance class.
@dstark I do agree with your comments about this about this board…
@doschicos When a student accepts FED loans there is full disclosure about cost and future payments…
My kid has had a job during summer and school breaks since she was 14. Her godmother is a CFA/CFP, and they have talked a lot about money management. Kid’s job pays for her cellphone, most clothes, and personal spending. Working has been a great experience for her and she has learned to plan, budget, prioritize. She is a very savvy shopper and is careful with her money. When we were opening a checking account for her with a debit card, I found myself wishing that the local banks would offer basic finance seminars for teens… how to balance the checkbook, how the debit card works, what kinds of savings accounts/CDs there are, identity theft, credit, etc. So many kids could benefit from this, and it would build a stronger customer base for the bank, too.
@phunt01810 The need based aid has a cost just like the subsidized lunch has. Both are subsidies. Not loans. That is my point. I don’t like the proposition that only those children who qualify for reduced or free lunches are deemed to need and benefit from financial management classes.
@doschicos I didnt explain myself well… When students sign fed loan doc, they have to complete a mini finance worksheet which explains how loans work, students responsibility , future payments, and term of the loans… It is like a mini finance course . We agree.
My parents were a textbook example of what not to do with regards to money. And on the flip side of it, I see people who are extraordinarily good at wealth building who fail to pass those skills on to their scions. So good or bad, one generation does not always pave the road to for the next.
Our kids both had to do some fictional budgets in their private HS as part of the “health/PE” course. They were supposed to pick a job/profession, find out what the wages/salary was, figure out how much they’d have to pay in taxes (federal & state), how much they’d have to pay for rent, now much they’d have to pay for all the expenses they currently had covered by their folks–insurance, food, transportation, etc. It was pretty eye-opening for some of the kids and made “huge” salaries and wages seem much smaller. In Boy Scouts, that was also something that was required–making a family budget and preparing food for the family after buying groceries.
I think my sibs and our kids learned from a combo of different things. I had jobs from the time I was hired as a babysitter at age 12 and summer jobs since age 14. We didn’t really get “allowance,” so if we wanted anything, it was up to us to figure out how to get it. I mostly saved pretty much all I earned.
Our kids both figured out how to save money and how to stretch it. S is probably the best of all of us in terms of finding great deals–quality at low prices. Both of my kids are good at living below their means, as that was how they were raised. There is some luck involved and some mentoring, as well as some dispositions–folks who are better at deferring gratification (like that old marshmallow experiment) tend to do better with finances.
$40 a month in middle school comes out to $480 a year. Growing up, my clothing budget for a whole school year was never anything close to $500; it is unfathomable to me that someone thinks that’s not enough for a middle school student. Different families have different circumstances.
Paying cash for cars is all fine and good if you have the disposable monthly income to save up money every month for a car, and enough time to save it up so that you can buy one when you need one. That’s the major problem I have with the Dave Ramsay advice. Say you’re fresh out of college, struggle to find a full-time job, but you make $12/hour and you need a car to get to and from work. Moving to a place with better public transit is not an option. Or let’s say you make $30K a year and you have two small children to support on that salary. You may simply have to buy a car on credit. Let’s also not forget that the cars in cash that people in these circumstances could theoretically afford (even if they spent 2-3 years saving up a little each month for them, and magically transporting themselves to work in the TARDIS in the interim) are going to have more problems than cars they could get with payments. When your 15-year-old junker’s transmission breaks and you make $12/hour, how can you afford to fix it? And what are you going to do while they work on it? (You’ve got a $1,000 deductible on your car insurance because you can’t afford anything better.)
I think the message shouldn’t be “don’t borrow to buy a car,” but “make sure you do your research and get the lowest interest rate possible, and buy a car you can reasonably afford.” A little debt isn’t a bad thing. I bought my car new for a good deal, it’s well below the threshold of what I could afford (even when I made half my current salary), and I don’t have to worry about the transmission falling out or the engine blowing up or whatnot. My time is worth money, too. Plus I negotiated and even the low end of my car’s KBB value is about the same as what I owe on it right now.
I grew up watching my parents struggle with junkers. I resolved that I was never going to do that to myself. It’s not just the time and money you spend fixing those junkers and scraping to buy a new one when it finally gives up the ghost; it’s the stress and mental energy you spend worrying about what you’re gonna do if your car gives out on you this week, and the logistical challenges and social capital you expend arranging for friends to cart you to and from work when it finally does. No thanks. I’ll take the loan. The course of my loan works out to about $38 extra per month in interest; heck yeah my peace of mind is worth that.