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Comment by thephyber | Hacker News Reader

Convenience and satisfaction.

I remember how anxious I was when, as a student, I didn’t know if a CC charge would be declined or if a debit charge that brought my account balance would fall to -$0.02, thus bringing the wrath of a $29 overdraft fee. The overdraft notice is also a distinctly anxiety-inducing letter.

Microloans are typically offered to people who are not eligible for larger, more traditional loans.

Also, some people who want expensive consumer goods do so for the feeling of the purchase and the feeling of accomplishment, but ignore the nagging reality that they haven’t actually accomplished the purchase until it is paid off.

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A college student would not take a $7 microloan for convenience and satisfaction. The funny part here is that a college student should know how to keep a balanced ledger! But that's not the point, the point is that microloans are meant for developing countries where an established credit market is still forming (like many countries in Africa and Southeast Asia)

> The funny part here is that a college student should know how to keep a balanced ledger!

That's something I was taught neither by my parents, nor at any point through my schooling. It'd be great if folks had this kind of fiscal literacy; but where are we expected to gain that knowledge?

I've heard tell of "civics" courses, back in the day, that taught the basics of what adults are expected to know. But they're long gone now.

I think the point is that a college student should be able to figure it out on their own. I was never taught how to keep a ledger; I just decided one day to download GnuCash and enter all my transactions there. Maybe I'm actually doing it all wrong, but I think it's been quite helpful for planning my spending.

I’ve taught all of my kids to maintain a checkbook, get receipts, understand paying bills and understand income versus expenses.

There is also this lost art or changing a tire, oil, checking fluids.

Civics wasn’t around when I was in high school but I remember my grandparents and parents had taken something similar.

Personally, I believe the loss of civics, home ecs, and other courses of that nature is primarily because they are not curricula tied to standardized testing. With No Child Left Behind and more rigorous focus on standardized testing for everything from determining school funding to teacher performance, anything that wasn't STEM or reading has kind of got chucked out the window, and civics/home ec is the easiest candidate since it doesn't really pull any emotional strings like, say, cutting music classes.

When I was a child in the 2000s we literally had two weeks where the "normal" curricula went to the wayside and we did two weeks of test prep for the city and state exams. Then I show up to college and my roommates getting into the top medical schools need to be told how to fry an egg.

Are there no required classes like that in your state? I took a consumer economics class in high school just over a decade ago out of requirement and looking at the current curriculum for my high school still shows an Illinois consumer education requirement which can be satisfied by consumer economics, economics, AP macro, AP micro, Introduction to Family & Consumer Sciences or Introduction to Business.

We had an economics course that was mostly macroeconomics, which under this regulation would technically qualify this requirement, but IMO a class on macroeconomics is about as helpful to learning how to balance your accounts, as watching Iron Chef or Chopped is to learning how to cook meals in a college dorm room.

The funny part here is that a college student should know how to keep a balanced ledger!

Yeah, but it turns out unpredictable ACH transaction delays made that harder than I had expected.

Dude fix your debit card. My card would just reject the charge..

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