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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

We need to instill financial literacy in high school. Make home ec a mandatory class. Don't graduate without passing.

I highly doubt many high school students would care or even pay attention to such a subject.

I am not saying teaching the subject in school is bad idea nor should it not be required schooling. I just think this solution is too utopic.

Keeping people financially illiterate makes a minute subpopulation of the finically literate very wealthy. In other words, I think the system, albeit vile, is working as intended (sadly).

They taught it to us (very briefly) in our Canadian high school, it was part of a mandatory course. I don't remember what it was called but the other thing I remember learning in that class was sex ed stuff.

I wish. It’s not just Gen Z though - look at average amount saved by household, or average amount of incoming going to savings, or average household credit card debt. Average credit card balance recently had the highest leap in 20 years.

It’s all really, really ugly.

It’s interesting though… if historical parallels return. When a man owes little money, the bank is in power for the relationship. When a man owes a mountain of money, he’s in charge. Banks can’t magically force customers to pay what they don’t have - and politicians won’t accept having tons of people on the street with their assets seized. I would see the higher credit card utilization statistics as something to panic over if I was a bank. It crosses into potential en-masse default territory.

high school? start in elementary. 7 years old can understand more than we think.

I don't disagree --but I don't want to overreach. It's bad enough kids are graduating not knowing the perils of compound interest. Yes, it would definitely be better if we started earlier, but let's go for the easier goal first.

Younger kids could yield better results since they tend to take interest in adult stuff and will likely pay more attention than a teenager.

It is very easy to play a game with debt and interest.

The earlier you start the more time to have to grasp the concept eventually

I won't say a lot about the credit card industry... But the one thing they have going for them is that you can't get a credit card without someone with good credit bringing you along.

There need to be more ways to build credit... but that's what's doing this currently in our society and it seems to work pretty well...

Why home ec? What does that have to do with the article?

Part of the home ec curriculum (at least when I took it a long time ago) is personal finances; one thing that we learned in high school (before being able to get a credit card) was that carrying a balance on a credit card is really expensive in the long run.

Exactly. I don't think it warrants it's own class, but it could be integrated into a known framework like ec where the kids are instilled some financial literacy --any literacy in debt.

It is a mandatory class in our local HS.

Whose interests would that serve?

the students

I think it was a rhetorical question. It won't be added to the curriculum since it hurts the big financial institutions

Yeah. The problem is a political conflict, not lack of awareness or ideas.

Definitely NOT the credit card companies who prey on unwitting and financially unsophisticated young earners.

In that case, good luck implementing it short of a wholesale political revolution.

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