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Old 01-26-2011, 11:37 AM  
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What would a comprehensive personal finance course do to our economy?

Maybe it wouldn't make a difference but......

I think that in Highschool there should be a course dedicated to teaching personal finance. I don't mean just about the stock market and balancing a checkbook. I am talking about things like:

-Different types of mortgages (adjustable rate, balloon, fixed...)
-interest rates (credit cards, loans, check cashing, etc...)
-depreciation of goods
-cost/payback analysis
-Income vs. expense balancing


Those are just a few things. Basically the areas where it seems many people make mistakes. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't make a difference.

Somehow, I feel a course like this would hurt our economy (based on how it works now).

I know there are "economics" classes and such but that doesn't seem to cover a lot of personal finance. Mostly how our nation/world economy works.(at least when I was in school)

What do you think it would do to our economy/society? (if anything)
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Old 01-26-2011, 11:57 AM  
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A lot of private schools have classes like that. One year, I had economics on top of an "Intro to finance" class that was about what you talked about, but still focusing kind-of on big picture. However, they did talk about mortgages, loans, interest, and other interesting things!

I think mandating it would make a positive effect, but I think it'd take years for us to really see that effect.
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Old 01-26-2011, 12:00 PM  
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I like the idea a lot. It wouldn't hurt to touch on Keynesian versus Austrian economic schools, either, as that would shine a pretty bright light on what's been going on in this country for a while that isn't so hot.
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Old 01-26-2011, 12:03 PM  
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Greenville, SC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jake7 View Post
A lot of private schools have classes like that. One year, I had economics on top of an "Intro to finance" class that was about what you talked about, but still focusing kind-of on big picture. However, they did talk about mortgages, loans, interest, and other interesting things!

I think mandating it would make a positive effect, but I think it'd take years for us to really see that effect.
I think it would take a while to see the effects. I also think that our CURRENT economy model may suffer somewhat because I think it relies on people spending beyond their means. I think it would make a large improvement to the personal welfare of many though (long term).
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Old 01-26-2011, 12:11 PM  
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help people? yeah

help our economy? probably not

Our society is consumer driven, if people only bought what they really needed and didn't use credit our consuming economy would slow down drastically, similar to what happened in japan where people are very careful about purchasing an item as they were getting currency appreciation so if they bought something today there was the risk of being able to get it even cheaper tomorrow and the cycle continued.

I once taught an intro to computers class and for excel made a loan calculator spreadsheet and may were quite surprised that a home is actually twice the price over a 30 year mortgage and how much it would add to a car loan, people have little ability to understand how much interest can add up
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Old 01-26-2011, 12:19 PM  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RedJeepXJ View Post
help people? yeah

help our economy? probably not

Our society is consumer driven, if people only bought what they really needed and didn't use credit our consuming economy would slow down drastically, similar to what happened in japan where people are very careful about purchasing an item as they were getting currency appreciation so if they bought something today there was the risk of being able to get it even cheaper tomorrow and the cycle continued.

I once taught an intro to computers class and for excel made a loan calculator spreadsheet and may were quite surprised that a home is actually twice the price over a 30 year mortgage and how much it would add to a car loan, people have little ability to understand how much interest can add up
I completely agree with you (change from other threads eh?)
Anyway, I think it would probably help in reducing the gap between the "have and have not" groups people always talk about. I think that many folks are "poor" due to not growing up in households where some of these basic things are taught. I definitely know that it is NOT exclusive to poor people, but I think it would be helpful especially for them.
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Old 01-26-2011, 12:23 PM  
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I am pretty sure that if you took a bunch of rich people, stripped them of their money and gave it all to the same number of poor people and waited 5-10 years..... The once poor folks would be poor again or on track to be and the once rich folks would have money again and on track to be rich again.
Alot of that is individual fiscal practices. Much of which was learned from observing their parents (I believe).
These are the things that should be taught.
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Old 01-26-2011, 03:16 PM  
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Indiana
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Boy Scouting's Personal Management is required for Eagle. I remember having to keep track of all the money I spent/spent on me for a while.

I remember Junior Achievement tried to teach a lot of that stuff in grade school, and JROTC had a section on financial management. I was sheltered in the Private school system though, and can't really comment on the PS system.
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Old 01-26-2011, 10:14 PM  
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I work in a public school and I am amazed kids can do any kind of math today. We use what is called everyday math. It is the bass ackwards most dumb way of teaching math I have ever seen.

Take for example 25x32. We the older generation would write it down and go 2x5 then 2x2+1 the move to 3x5 then 3x2+1 right 6 steps total. Not with every day math.

Nope you take
20 + 5
30 + 2

Now you do
5x2= 10
20x2= 40
30x5= 150
20x30= 600

10+40= 50

50+150= 200

200+600= 800

You added 3 extra steps for kids to make mistakes on.

Now the real way they screw up kids with this idiotic way of doing math is they teach a little bit of addition then a little bit of subtraction then a little bit of multiplication then a little big of division then fractions then to decimals. Now they go back to addition and start with slightly higher and go back through so that they don't get a good solid base in addition and subtraction before moving up to multiplication and division. My son has horrible problems with everyday math. I get him home and have to teach him the old school way of math like I was taught amazingly he gets it every time. Now they are looking at adopting new math books the upcoming school year. YEAH not a single one does make the way we were mostly taught. Nope it is all this crazy stuff.

Pile that on to all these standardized test. When was the last time you seen a standardized kid? The kids in my district take more predictor tests than I have ever seen. There is a math, reading, spelling predictor test taken 4 times a year in my school. When do these kids every have time to learn. Then they teach these kids the wrong things.

OK Columbus didn't discover AMERICA. He wasn't some nice guy that was just looking for a way to China. He and his men had in a matter of a few years killed every native to the island they landed on. They would take and rip infants from their mothers arms for crying. They would then take the crying baby and toss into a pin with hungry dogs and what the dogs eat them alive. These were not nice people.

So yes I think making kids today take personal management classes would be a good thing.
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Old 02-15-2011, 11:14 AM  
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(I know, aging thread...)

I believe a class like that is a no brainer. I also believe it would be detrimental to the way our economy has been set up. We count on people spending more than they can afford, then making payments. Consumerism is like the antithesis of smart financing.
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