Comments on: If Personal Finance Were A 4 Year Course in High School

By: financialwizardess

financialwizardess — Fri, 06 May 2011 18:36:04 +0000

I agree with posters above that JA is a great resource, as is the Jump$tart organization. I’ve given this considerable thought in the past since I have had the desire to teach these lessons to the next generation. However, I think that what you outline could easily be instituted in other existing classes very easily. You don’t have to take a semester of finance each year, just implement those lessons into the required English course, or Math course (but it seems some kids don’t take 4 years of Math anymore?) Just a thought.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:00:39 +0000

seriously? We did checking accounts in the regular class during 5th grade. I definitely think this is a better idea than the new CARD act which is just going to push the inevitable irresponsibility out a few years, though. Specifically, this is way to spread out I think a few weeks on an overview of finances would be great, but oh well. as Ben Franklin so rightly said “Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that.”

By: kaly

kaly — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:22:40 +0000

I agree except I think it could all be done in one year, perhaps the senior year. I’ve been saying it for years, but until it’s a requirement, I don’t see it happening.

I’d be the first in line to teach this in the schools in my county.

By: J. Joyner

J. Joyner — Sat, 05 May 2007 14:26:39 +0000

As a business education teacher, I feel that you are right on the money! Keyboarding at many schools is required but I also think that financial literacy should be required as well; if not in the business department, then in the math departments and it should be a part of the high school assessments.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Thu, 03 May 2007 19:22:46 +0000

If you’re planning on only making minimum wage for the rest of your life, probably not much use.

By: Minimum Wage

Minimum Wage — Wed, 02 May 2007 23:21:27 +0000

What’s the use of all that if your earning power is minimum wage?

By: wanzman

wanzman — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:56:59 +0000

? This is a suggestion for a high school course, so I don’t think the majority of kids would turn 18 until junior or senior year, so they would not be able to get credit cards, and thus not be able to go into debt.

Perhaps you thought it was meant as a college course?

By: Puck

Puck — Tue, 01 May 2007 17:43:39 +0000

Unfortunately, the students got introductory credit cards in the first year, ran up a huge debt and had to drop out in the third year before they got to take the course “How to use credit cards wisely”.

By: Sasha

Sasha — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:15:04 +0000

Great ideas! Though really, students would learn best if parents could teach them these things, we can’t count on every parent to do this. To me, the stuff listed for seniors is almost too advanced for high school students–I’m still learning now as a recent college graduate. But I suppose for those who don’t go to college, it is important they know about these things too.

By: Posco

Posco — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 04:10:48 +0000

The key is making lessons that are captivating and applicable to the students’ age, and yet will also teach lessons that will be applicable to adult situations.

Students are lazy. They won’t necessarily want to learn about how to finance a house if they won’t be buying a house for another 6 years. And teach them how to read a contract? Hmmmm.

I had a Junior Achievement section in my Social Science class in 9th grade. It’s true that we remember very little from jr. high and high school lessons, and the personal finance lessons are no exception. I vaguely remember “learning” how to write checks (I already knew that — mom taught me). I vaguely remember “playing” the stock market.

High school graduation required taking a one-semester course on “personal finance”. I skimmed the 200-page “textbook” in a couple weeks and passed the course by taking the final exam. The curriculum was severely lacking. You cannot teach these lessons with a book and homework. I think the best way to teach this stuff is to simulate the real world (with different students playing different roles — buyers and sellers) or “play” with real money, as in allowance from mom and dad.

By the way, the title of this post is a bit misnamed — you can’t spend a FOUR-YEAR course on this stuff. It would probably be integrated into other existing curricula, plus ONE course in high school.

By: hustler

hustler — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 00:28:39 +0000

they should make Personal Finance a requirement for a high school diploma.

By: wally

wally — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 20:56:36 +0000

Yeah! Finally, people are getting it! I do teach a year-long personal finance class for grades 10-12 that covers all of the above plus risk management (insurance), “smart” shopping for small and large purchases, and economic concepts such as opportunity cost and inflation/recession. Rather than a set of skills (like balancing a checkbook), our goal is to teach strategies for money managment. To overcome the obstacle of students not caring how their investments do or how well their budgets balance, they have to keep a journal of the strategies they used to make the decisions. They are graded on their rationale. If their portfolio does poorly, but they used sound strategies to choose their investment vehicles, make purchases, etc., they do well in the class. It is difficult to grade the success of what should be long-term investing when it is compressed into 8 months of performance. So far, the class has been a hit with students who have commented over and over again how they feel they are receiving more information they will use in “real life” than they do in other courses.

Some states are beginning to require courses in money management for graduation. Check with your legislators and jumpstartcoalition.org. Our economy and our future NEED this!

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:11:16 +0000

Freshmen through Junior year look great and I think they would be very beneficial to students. The problem for me comes with the Investment and Mortgage information in the senior year. It is very important that students know about this information but, what exactly are they learning and who is going to teach these classes.

Many people have different opinions about the best principals for investing and mortgages. ie. Active or passive management of mutual funds, roth IRA vs. Traditional IRA vs. 401k. I think getting exposure to these products is important but there is a thin line between exposure and advice.

I had a teacher in college who was teaching us about mutual funds and because he also had worked as a financial advisor he was teaching us about actively managed funds with high expenses and turnover ratios and was basically selling them to the students. Thankfully we were all finance majors and could analyze the investments for ourselves but if you were tough these were good at a younger age without experience you may not know any better.

By: zen

zen — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:41:57 +0000

I’d say have the saving earlier, check book balancing at 16, and credit cards at 17 – otherwise you could be reaching them too late.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:11:30 +0000

I definitely like the idea of doing the credit card management portion when kids are seniors. This will be right before the turn 18 and can actually get their own credit card / go off to college.

Great ideas. It’d be fun to teach some of these classes!