Financial Literacy

 


My Experience.
Numbers have always played a big role in my life, but never in a finance way, just simple plain mathematics. The only type of “financial literacy” I got in elementary or middle school was a quarter was 25 cents, a dime was 10 cents, a nickel was 5 cents, and a penny was a cent. Outside of school, most of my family weren’t financially literate either, just my grandfather. He would just tell me to be smart with my money, but as someone as young as I was, I didn’t understand what that really meant. 


High School. In my high school, we had these rotational classes, meaning each marking period there was a different class to try to teach us about finance, careers, etc. Freshman year the class I took that could’ve possibly taught me anything about financial literacy would be my consumer math class. The issue with that class was the teacher didn’t even look like she wanted to teach it. She would just give us assignments on finance, but didn’t really explain it. If she did, it definitely was not something I remember. The only thing I truly remember was her bragging about all the money she has, the land she owns, and how she was counting the days to retire because she didn’t even want to be there. All this information would be beneficial if she taught us how she got there in the first place. 


My sophomore year was the same too. I had another consumer math class, but a different teacher and during quarantine. He didn’t even want to have class online, we just did assignments and turned them in. Once again not really learning much, just being thrown assignments. 

In my senior year, I chose to take business math. The keyword being chose, meaning if I didn’t choose to take the course, the only financial literacy I would have been required to take was the two consumer classes. This class I gained a little more knowledge than the previous classes, but not enough. He just threw worksheets at us and expected us to know what to do. If we asked any questions, he would just throw a fit. The things I learned was because I had to sit there and teach myself how to do the worksheet.

Overall, I’d like to consider myself somewhat financial literate for my age, but that’s due to personal experiences, my own research, and stuff I’ve heard. School definitely did not prepare me or any of my peers for real world situations. 

Reflection. Financial literacy should be a requirement for all students to learn starting at a young age. If a person didn’t already come from a financially literate and stable home, there’s not a huge chance they’re financially literate. According to U.S. News & World Report, since a lot of people aren’t financially literate in the United States, there was a rise in government entitlement spending (p. 42). Lots of people are relying on the government to buy food, pay rent, or to live in general. I feel as if a lot more people were shown different ways to start to build generational wealth and break those generational curses, there would be a lot less people needing to rely on the help from the government. There just needs to be better ways to go about it and people to teach it.

Lots of schools have mentioned the need for financial classes, but don’t have the proper curriculum or teachers that have enough knowledge on it (p. 44). Even if the school has the classes, lots of the teachers aren’t even equipped to teach the class. It was probably just thrown on them to take some time out of their class to mention it. This can go to show you, it all starts from the root. If the teachers weren’t taught about financial literacy, then that means the parent weren’t taught, leading to their children not being taught. This isn’t just about classes to learn how to budget and save, but how to buy a car, do your taxes, advice on student loans, etc. Obviously, if you do the research yourself, you can teach yourself, but schools should be able to provide students the wisdom and knowledge to be financially stable and to build wealth for their great great great grandkids to come. What they decide to do with that knowledge is up to them, but there potentially could be a decrease in poverty, if more students were taught how to handle their finances.





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