Personal Finance: Why It Should Be Mandatory in Schools by Carolyn

Personal Finance: Why It Should Be Mandatory in Schools by Carolyn - June 2018 Scholarship Essay

Around the time students are graduating from high school, most of them receive business letters from credit card companies. The ads promise the naive young people low interest rates, generously understanding late policies, and easy financing. Some companies even send free t-shirts or enter the students in prize raffles when they join! The upsetting reality is, however, that most of these students will take the bait and spend anywhere from $100-5000 using a credit card (creditcard.com). Why does the thought curve exist among young people that it is normal, or even cool to use credit cards or to take out student loans? The answer is simple: a lack of education in the world of personal financial management. Most schools require students to take certain core classes, but they have optional ones as well in areas such as computer skills, fine arts, and business-related subjects. Because the subject of personal finance has been categorized as an elective in most if not all schools, a generation of young people have grown up who are either financially illiterate, or who are relying completely on their guardians’ judgement of finances (many of whom are currently in debt and who do not teach their children to avoid it). Personal finance should be a core class because it is a relevant, applicable life skill, it equips students regardless of whether or not they desire a career in finances, and because our country desperately needs knowledgeable citizens who are responsible with their money.
A person who is oblivious of their money matters cannot be a fully functional adult, making it imperative that the subject of personal finance should be included in the mandatory curriculum taught in schools. The opportunity for everyone to learn about mortgages and loans, credit vs. debit cards, and all other personal financial management topics is too good to miss. In fact, all students ought to be familiarized with the subject of money management, because this knowledge is necessary in the real world. Being able to budget for expenses and save for a rainy day are invaluable skills to possess, especially in a material world filled with people who are living in a way that declares that spending money is better than saving it. Students knowing how to save, how not to get into debt, and how to manage their finances in general could change this majority and positively impact humanity’s future.
Some electives are taught in school simply to allow students to decide whether or not they are interested in a career in that particular field; personal finance is not one of those electives. Whereas a class such as web design is geared towards someone who is thinking about majoring in computer science, personal finance is an applicable class regardless of whether or not the student wants to earn a business-related degree. The relevance of this current elective cannot be over-stressed. Anyone, no matter if they are a receptionist, an engineer, or a professor, ought to have been taught the skills covered in a personal financial management course, and because of this usefulness, the subject should be a core class rather than an elective in schools.
The final reason why the subject of personal finance should be required in schools deals with the overall financial situation of our country. More often than not, a country’s economic status is reflected in the financial standings of its citizens. If the country as a whole is spending more money than it has, chances are its people are doing the same thing. The remedy to reverse this effect is simply to teach the inhabitants themselves to responsibly manage their finances. An appropriate proverb advises that “to give a man a fish will feed him for a day, but to teach a man to fish will feed him for a lifetime.” To begin the turn-around of the national debt crisis, personal finance classes should be mandatory for all students in our nation’s schools.
In order for future generations of students to avoid the entrapments of sly credit card companies and the like, the class of personal finance must be included in the core curriculum of our nation’s schools. While the average person will rarely use the skills learned in an elective culinary course, the knowledge gained in a personal financial management class is relevant for everyone. Because it is not necessarily a career-pathway elective like some other classes, the topic of personal financial management ought to be a compulsory subject taught in schools rather than an elective. Additionally, if our country’s current financial status is reflected in that of its citizens, then obviously the students of America need to be educated in all matters concerning their personal finances for the sake of the nation’s future. Lives unburdened by debt are a possibility, but they are a probability if schools make personal finance classes a part of their core curriculum for all students.

Works Cited
Gonzalez, Jamie, and Tamara E. Holmes. “Credit Card Debt Statistics.” Creditcards.com, 31 Jan. 2017. Web. 5 June 2018.