How often does the kid grumbling through math class that he will never need to know this stuff in real life turn into the grown-up who can’t balance his checkbook or figure out which mortgage he needs?
A bill in the Michigan Legislature would require schools to offer a class on personal money management for high school juniors and seniors. The class would teach students about the basics of saving, investing, and borrowing money.
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Fewer than one-third of American college students say they learned anything about financial management in high school, according to a 2016 study by the Bank of America and USA Today.
Meanwhile, about half the college students surveyed said they wished they had been taught more about how to handle money before they graduated high school.
A 2016 study by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans could not pass a five-question quiz on basic financial knowledge. And scarier than that, the percentage of people who could pass the quiz has steadily fallen from 42 percent in 2009 to 37 percent in 2016.
If Americans don’t understand how loans work, how their retirement savings should be invested, or how to save money for a home, the nation’s collective economic stability is at risk. And if parents don’t understand these concepts, they likely are not teaching their teens.
Michigan’s proposal would allow students to substitute the personal financial knowledge class for another math requirement, such as algebra. And although school officials have expressed concerns that districts might need to hire more teachers to take on the extra course, this seems like a relatively small burden for the return that a better informed generation of money managers would deliver.
Communities count on people handling their personal finances responsibly. That responsible money management requires a firm knowledge of of basic financial concepts.
Michigan lawmakers should approve the bill and legislatures in other states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania, should follow suit with similar measures of their own.
First Published June 3, 2018, 9:30 p.m.
