Discussions about personal finance, tips on improvement and questions about it.
5 Personal Finance Education Lessons That Should Be Taught In School
5 Personal Finance Education Lessons That Should Be Taught In School
attention to a While I can't guarantee that I would have paid super close personal finance education class if I had taken it, I'm sure it would have been a better use of my time than some of the other classes that were required when I was in school.
Really love this lady's blog. There is a lot of common sense here, and links to practical budgeting resources. I am talking about this stuff to my kids now, but never had any good understanding of it growing up. The financial fluency came slowly!
I've always worked very hard, but not always very smart, because there was never much to be in control of growing up, and I thought only materialistic sorts concerned themselves with finances. The slow life lessons I learnt were counter this, though. I try to help friends steer through it all, now.




I was lucky that my middle school had a personal finance module, where we learned how to write a check, balance a checkbook, and talked about savings. This was long enough ago that I can't remember if we discussed credit cards, but someone somewhere along the way instilled in me the lesson that the credit card should be paid off every month. I was lucky.
Now if I can trick myself into sticking to essentials for the next few months, we'd be in much better shape financially.
You were lucky! That's more than many get. It really needs to be taught - we aren't born with those skills. I was talking to a friend who works as a psych the other day, and she remarked how many people's personal affairs were really messed up by poor judgement with finances, and this contributed to their general feelings of distress.
She also mentioned a friend who works with charities that provide shopping vouchers, who said she despaired at how many of the struggling families would use their vouchers to get big junk food takeouts for an evening, rather than shop for groceries that would last the fortnight. It's easy to take a little common sense for granted - but many people (like these) have never been raised with any good examples to learn from.