Financial Literacy and Our Kids

You know, one of the main reasons I believe that we are falling short as a country in financial management, is because we don’t teach our children properly. We tell them to “Study hard, get good grades, get into a good college, and get a good job” but is that really the best thing for them? I say that it isn’t. I think we should focus our children more on their respect for money and educate them on how to leverage it. In 2006, according to USA Today’s article by Kathy Chu “High schools teach more kids basics in Finance 101″ only 14 states required their high school level kids to learn simple, and I stress simple, personal finance. The article also mentions that only 52.4% of our children could correctly answer questions about credit cards, insurance, retirement, and the like. That’s scraping half. Half. One out of every two kids knows jack-nothing about money. That’s scary. So how do we combat this? Well, you do it the same way you talk about the birds and the bees, underage drinking, and taking illegal drugs. No, you don’t turn on an after school special and call it a day. You sit them down and really talk about it. Let them know the importance of money, teach them to respect it. One thing about our culture is that we try to aggrandize when we do without. We say things like, “the best things in life are free”, and “money can’t buy you everything” and while these are essentially true statements, they really downplay the importance of financial literacy in our country. It’s time we start taking a real stand and demand that our children learn how to manage their money, just as much as we demand that they know who Marco Polo was, or how to calculate a-b=c.