Comments on: Whom Shall We Trust to Teach Our Children about Personal Finance?

By: MasterPo

MasterPo — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:09:33 +0000

Very good topic.

I hope I can teach my children to be financially savy.

But it also scares me that a lot of what kids these days are being taught about wealth and those with it. That is, people with money are “evil” and are duty bound to give it to others, that working hard is fine and once you achieve success you have to give a big portion of it to others who haven’t worked as hard, and that somehow you’re the problem in society if you have done better than someone else.

Never be ashamed of being successful!

By: Doctor S

Doctor S — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:02:09 +0000

Your right, the less people that have to learn from their mistakes, the more successful people we can potentially have, but we need to start the education now and early for the children. Basic stuff is the key to building an interest that they can run with on their own.

By: DAD

DAD — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:52:34 +0000

Sent you a copy of an art re this subject

By: My Journey

My Journey — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:04:11 +0000

“Plato had some rather radical ideas about the answers to those questions, including yanking kids out of the home so that the elite (e.g., other philosophers) could do the educating. Plato did not think that your average parental unit could be trusted with that job. (If you’ve never heard of Plato, you need to question your own education.)”

Isn’t that our education set up today? except our teachers are no where near elite for the most part.

By: Melanie Reformed Spender

Melanie Reformed Spender — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:49:57 +0000

There are some teaching tools developed by banks and other institutions that teach the basics of investing.

Your comment on not trusting teachers is relevant to a certain point, but you should consider that they don’t make the program, the government’s education specialists do.

When I was in high school, basic personal finance was taught in a mandatory class in high school. It wasn’t much, but we learned a few things about the basics of investing.

Where I teach now, there is a similar course, but it isn’t mandatory. It includes the basics of interest, how to read a bank statement, the value of saving vs spending and how to calculate the overall cost of credit.

By: TStrump

TStrump — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:06:33 +0000

I think we need to learn to talk about money at home – it’s such a taboo subject in our culture for some reason.
In my family, we never talked about money growing up, and we never had much of it.
If we’d actually had a discussion around the kitchen table and brought up issues – salaries, overspending, unemployment – I would have been farther ahead at a younger age.

By: Matt SF

Matt SF — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:47:42 +0000

Good question. My folks gave me a checkbook at age 15 with a monthly allowance. If I came up short, I stayed home and my car didn’t leave the driveway. Sink or swim techniques are quite effective.