I’m unable to get to sleep tonight. Maybe it’s my screwed up sleep schedule after a week in China–I left Shanghai at 1pm, yesterday, and arrived in San Francisco at 12:50pm, yesterday. Maybe it’s been too much Neal Stephenson followed by Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us. It could also be that I avoided my pile of work today because I needed at least one non-work, non-travel day, and now I’m tossing and turning thinking about all the stuff I have to do tomorrow… I mean today.
Whatever the reason, I can’t sleep.
I keep thinking about the following scenario:
If we taught a requisite curriculum, and truly educated, on Money in schools
then People, as in the population of Human Beings as a whole,
would do far fewer stupid things
because today
money = food, shelter and care
and
money = happiness
For just a moment, leave philosophical arguments aside, because believe me, I will side with you about how universally incorrect the above statements are.
but…
Today, even for the incredibly crappy value of my nation’s dollar, currency is life. I don’t hunt and forage. I didn’t inherit a cent. Like most other people I know, I work.
I work in what I like to call not-my-parent’s world.
There is no job security.
No one has ever offered me a pension, and ignore the horrific time bomb called Social Security.
Layoff is now a polite term for being fired permanently.
Inflated real estate prices–yes yes, I agree with you real estate is, and always will be one of the greatest investment, but take a moment and Zillow.com Mountain View, my current town of residence. I can’t say that if I could service a million dollar plus mortgage I’d jump at the chance at grabbing a 2,000 square foot home.
Just some thoughts.
Thanks for reading. I finally feel like I can go to sleep.
Curious of others’ thoughts on the topic of Money Education.
Comments (2)
I feel pretty lucky to have learned a lot about the importance of money from my parents. (saving, staying out of debt, avoiding frivolous expenditures, etc..) If I hadn’t learned from them I don’t think I would have learned too much about it in school. That said, teaching more about being financially responsible in school seems like a good idea to me… :)
Ouch. The mortgage calculator said $7,500/mo.
I didn’t learn a lot about money growing up. I still haven’t, other than realizing the truth in my grandfather’s saying: If you can’t buy it with cash you don’t need it.
In our family, we don’t really talk about money. I don’t know why.
What I learn now I learn from TV shows, books “for Dummies”, and the occasional friend who knows what they’re doing.
I wish they had taught us in school. As part of a math course, maybe. A “this is one very real way that math applies to life” section.
But my oldest nephew (he’s 12) is interested in the stock market. I think they are teaching about it at his school, a charter or magnate school.
There is hope.