I’ve recently experienced several straining family related financial situations that make me firmly believe financial management should be a part of the high school curriculum. One of my close friends and I are in similar situations in that family related financial troubles have been the cause of much grief to us. Such common sense principles as spend what you have not what you will have, time value of money and save, save, save are so simple and intuitive yet so difficult for many to follow.

I’m not quite sure how I learned to manage my money and save. My parents lived within their means and were never extravagant. Yet, my sister ran into a bit of credit card debt after college while I paid off my college credit card bill within the first 2 months of working. Even though my sister and I grew up in the same environment, we had and still have very different ideas about money in our early years but I’m glad to say, have reached similar conclusions in our near/early thirties. Although I didn’t necessarily learn all about financial management through my parents, I definitely did not learn it in school. Thinking back upon it, I am quite puzzle as to why such crucial principles to living responsibly was never taught to me in an academic environment.

In this day and age, when young adults are the target audience of credit card companies and teenagers have thousands of marketers promoting products to them, personal financial management should be a mandatory part of the high school curriculum.  One of our friends’ 16 years old sister recently asked for a pair of Christian Dior diamond earrings which cost several hundreds of dollars for her 16th birthday present.  I don’t think I even knew Christian Dior as a brand until I was in college or graduated from college.  Just consider some recent stats: U.S consumers are carrying $2.456 trillion in debt and the amount of revolving credit rose by $5 billion in July.

Given that many young adults today already face staggering student loans when they graduate, they should really have the tools at hand to manage their finance responsibly. I admit that I knew very little about personal credit score until recently but I wish that was something taught in school as well.  One last thought, teaching financial management is the same as teaching sex education to prevent teenagers/young adults from ruining their lives.

What do I think should be in the curriculum?

- time value of money

- compounding interest

- budgeting/cash flow management

- fine print lines of credit card agreements