Should Personal Finance Classes Be Mandatory For College Students?

Despite the importance of finance, accounting, and consumer intelligence, these topics are typically neglected in high schools. Unfortunately, personal finance is often learned by trial and error. The problem with this method of learning is that it only takes one costly financial mishap to set you back for years. This is why I created a basic personal finance book for total beginners. With these concepts you can use the other books in the Smart Money series to further build your knowledge of personal finance topics.

When planning for college, the typical student factors in the costs of tuition, books, and board. While many students feel that they are prepared financially, most students fail to include the expenses of things they may encounter during college. Things such as Greek life, partying, and buying meals are activities that many students participate in. Over the course of a student's life at college, these activities cost large amounts of money. Living away from home forces students to pay for most of their daily needs on their own. Each year students dig their way deeper into debt while in college because of all the extra costs. Although many students have college budgets prepared, a large majority of students are faced with extra costs not planned for.

"Seventeen states already require a personal finance class in their common core standards", Ghahremam states in the article. By requiring a personal finance class into the curriculum Antonia Farzan writes, "High school seniors who had taken a personal finance class were more likely to save money (93%, compared to 84% of students who hadn't taken a class), have a budget (60%, compared to 46%), and invest (32%, compared to 17%)." By requiring a personal finance class into the curriculum, it would teach students how to manage their income, while helping students decrease the amount of debt in adulthood. Students who enter the work force would also benefit from financial education because they would make wise decisions, and would purchase needed goods like a house and a car that would help them accumulate a good credit over their lifetime. However, requiring a personal finance class into the high school curriculum can be difficult. Standardized tests like the ACT or SAT do not test personal finance concepts. To raise the financial IQ of a high school student, teachers need to be qualified to teach personal finance, but only one in five teachers feel comfortable teaching personal finance (Kadlec). However, teaching students one semester of personal finance in high school might not be as beneficial as teaching it every year, but it's a start to helping kids with a brighter

College today is so expensive that most people that are fortunate enough to attend, end up having to take out student loans at one point during their collegiate careers to help pay for their tuition and other fees associated with college. If people do not manage their student loans right, the debt can pile up and put you in very shaky financial state, and have major impacts on ones life as well as others too. There are ways that you can manage your student loans, and pay them off in an effective and timely manner such as: paying of the most expensive loan s first, picking the right payment options, staying in touch with your lenders, and paying more than the required

Many college students face this same struggle of deciding the rest of their future right out of high school. Unfortunately, freshman college students are under educated about their finances and tend to over borrow when they come to college. Student loan debt is a major problem in America that could easily be fixed by educating students before they are allowed to borrow large sums of money.

Financial decisions are something everyone faces like buying a car to figuring out how to pay for students loans or debts. We are not taught about these types of financial decisions and how to go about them from a young age. In the news article Working Financial Literacy in With the Three R’s by Tara Siegel Bernard, she talks about how more states are beginning to require a personal finance instructions class. In the article Finance Course Prompts Debate by Gina Davis, she suggests incorporating financial elements into already required classes.

these courses are being used to educated students about financial literacy to better prepare them for the future. As stated in the article “Financial Education Leaving Americans Behind” by Greg Burns, “Utah, Missouri and Tennessee require students to take a semester-long personal-finance class before graduating from high school…” While many people find these courses to be helpful others are against this idea. In the article it states “ Trouble is, growing evidence suggests that financial-literacy courses don’t work. Worse, they may actually hurt, in part by making their graduates overconfident about limited skills”. On the other hand supporters point to the fact that people who were not required to take a financial course are not aware of how to take care of their finances. Which is concerning and is a great example as to why schools districts should input these economic courses into their

In the United States, the majority of students are trying to gain knowledge by attending colleges. Majority of students fall under middle class income family. Therefore, many of them are not wealthy to pay for it college. Each individual is being counter attacked by loans, work, and life. In order to pay for college they ended up taking loan out. “The private-loan market has now reached a volume of $17-billion a year, with an average annual increase of 24 percent over the past 10 years.” By Richard G. Diffeliciantonio. By looking at those numbers, it shows that students are taking out too much loans. In addition, students changes their major after a few semester and that impacted them a lot

Even with these changes some may still doubt why these classes are important, but here are a few statistics about the financial literacy of today’s adults. According to Caitlin Blake of Concordia University, “Only 39% of adults make budgets and track their spending.” and “32% of adults do not save a portion of their annual income.” (Blake) These statistics show that a growing number of adults either don’t use, or haven’t acquired the skills needed to be financially wise. Even with these numbers still being a minority at the moment, a possible outcome in the future could be a majority of adults struggling to manage personal finances. Though many schools still do offer courses to teach these types of skills, many do not require them past middle school. With these classes still being electives, they are still highly susceptible to being eliminated from schools course offerings and, students opting not to take them. Now off the topic of financial literally or; therefore, the lack of, we now move on the topic of

All young college students need to know how to balance a checkbook. Balancing your personal checkbook is a crucial life skill that all every college student needs. Having a clear sense of where all your money goes releases a huge stress relief off your shoulders. All incoming money should be accounted for, from all types of aid: financial aid, or grants, loans. Being able to balance your personal checkbook shows true financial independence. And if you're tired being broke you can see where you need to plan in your spending habits.

Although the reliance on student loans continues to increase for college students across the nation, the vast majority of American teenagers are not required to attend and complete a Financial Literacy course before graduating high school. According to Jillian Berman, only five states scored an A on the 2015 Report Card on State Efforts to Improve Financial Literacy in High Schools, and those same five states are the only states in the country that require students to take a dedicated semester of personal finance courses before graduating (Marketwatch.com). There is an obvious problem with the state efforts to properly educate finances when 14 out of 50 states rank in at a failing grade. Money is an essential asset to life on Earth, and proper education on financial management is vital for the basic requirements to sustain life. Education on how to manage money in order to afford food, shelter, clothing should be the main priority of the Financial Literacy courses. More in-depth are topics

This statement is rather shocking but proves why high school students should be taught financial literacy. Financial literacy is the ability of learning how to manage money. Financial literacy should be taught because, more people have been going bankrupt at a younger age, they have more debt options, and lastly are unable to manage money because they have never been taught. This is not just a problem for an individual, but potentially a huge problem in this country’s future.

A lot of students find themselves in financial trouble. Especially, if you only work a certain amount of hours. Students have trouble maintaining finances because they have mostly lived off of parents and/or guardians since birth. For most students, college is usually the first time away from home. It can be difficult to adjust. Overall, learning to manage money can be a daunting task for anyone, but especially when you are young and just starting out.

College students usually do not understand that there should be a budget set between the things we want and the things we need. Today I will be informing you how to save money so that you are able to save money throughout your college lives. ( thesis and purpose statement)

Budgeting can be very difficult, nevertheless for college students, so I will be explaining how to budget in college by making smart decisions. A college education is probably one of the most expensive purchases a young adult will most likely ever purchase in their lifetime. College can be very expensive as a consequence tuition can range anywhere from 10,000 to 70,000 a year. Nearly all college students pay for college by a college fund, scholarship/grants, out of their own or parent's pocket or borrowed money. Despite the fact some of those payments aren’t directly coming from the student it is more than likely that they still don’t have a stable income to provide themselves with basic necessities. Most colleges don’t provide students with basic necessities which means they acquire to go out and obtain everything needed as far as food, supplies, books, also toiletries. The average college student spends anywhere from $200-$700 a month on just the articles they need. While on articles they want they spend anywhere from $20-$200. More than likely that most college students don’t work, notwithstanding first-year students and athletes, which is a large population of the school anyway. Today most students aren’t obtaining a stable cash flow and even the ones who are from allowances or a job tend to still most likely struggle with budgeting. Budgeting can be a very difficult task even for adults or people making a substantial amount of money, but it’s not impossible if