Financial Education in School

Time Magazine recently published an article titled How to Teach Kids About Money. The article stated that kids aren’t receiving enough information about money management and even more startling, that financial education programs don’t always work. I think it’s wonderful that schools are trying to teach children about how to properly use money, it’s an invaluable life skill and is as important as learning to work with people who are different than you are. But no one should be surprised that financial education in school isn’t enough. Children don’t perform as well in any of their subjects if they are lacking support at home for whatever reason. Parents cannot abdicate their responsibility to educate their own children in any area of academics, including financial literacy.

Of course there are many parents out there who didn’t understand how to manage their own money as evidenced by the amount of mortgages that people couldn’t afford long-term. To be fair, some people purchased responsible mortgages then lost their source of income; but there were also those who purchased ARMs or other risky mortgages and found themselves in over their heads.

There are scores of people today who are learning how to manage their money because they have no other choice. This is a golden opportunity to teach our children by allowing them to understand how and why we’re making the decisions we are about our money. If they hear us talking about saving for a big purchase rather than buying on credit, or making value decisions about what we need and what we want, they’ll learn to make responsible decisions with their money. Of course the kids will make their own money mistakes and mistakes can often be the best teacher, but giving them a solid foundation could help those mistakes to be less catastrophic.