Hacker News Reader

Comment by Algemarin | Hacker News Reader

> This discussion is about subscriptions but the general idea applies to so much more – basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary.

I think it's one of the major failures of the education system. Why is there no class in school which covers taxes, savings, budgeting, etc? People are seemingly just expected to know this on their own.

View on HN

Most subjects taught in K-12 tend to be ancient: language, math, history, science, music, etc. with occasional modern electives.

Obviously personal finance is also ancient on some level, but I wonder how long it's actually been so complicated and critical as to warrant consideration for being taught in school. I'm no expert, but I think the complexities like payment cards, insanely complex tax code, etc. are quite modern. On the other hand, the same could be said for driver's ed which is pretty common.

When I was in grade school (a very long time ago), personal finance was a huge focus. It was the main thing you learned in Home Economics class. When my kids were in grade school, it was basically not taught at all. Home Ec was more about sewing and cooking than about, you know, economics.

I don't know when that change happened, but it's to the detriment of everyone.

Would the kinds of people who have trouble budgeting and managing their investments be any better at it if the technique was taught at school? Judging from my own experience, I'd say willpower is the bigger barrier. Thankfully I'm not in a situation where I'd need to carefully watch my daily expenses (being semi-concious of them works well for me), but if I had to, I'd have to force myself. Maybe that's too much for some.

> managing their investments

Bold of you to assume that these people have investments at all.

Probably because people don't pay attention. I had someone at university that asked the same question, why didn't we have these classes be required. Our school required it and they were in the same class as me. They just didn't bother to pay attention to even know they had taken it.

IF you don't know the basics of math you won't figure out personal finance. If you do know math you can figure it out - that isn't saying you will, but you can.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com