Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday an agreement that requires all California high school students to take a semester-long personal finance education course starting by the 2027-28 school year.
Well, I've called for it on here. Now this'll put it to the test -- we'll see how Californian students perform before-and-after the introduction of the classes and relative to states that don't make it part of their core curriculum.
I hope this works.
Skimming their material, looks like it also deals with countering some sales tactics and the like, like companies aiming to exploit fear-of-missing-out to sell product.
Although you generally are solid in 2 to 4 range, the more important thing as it turns out is (aside from prompt payments) to make sure the credit limit is high. Those store cards with 300 limits are looked down upon.
I'm not aware of any harms from using a no-fee credit card that you pay off in full each month. You get 1% - 5% back, and it's easier to deal with fraudulent charges.
If you have a credit card with a $25,000 limit, that limit counts against your total even if you are not using it. For example, if it is determined that you can sustain mortgage debt of a maximum of $400,000 at current interest rates, you will not qualify for that amount because you also have an open credit card with an available balance of $25,000 at a significantly higher interest rate.
EDIT: You can only decrease what you owe on a loan but a credit card is an open line of credit that you can max out at any time. Because of this, the entire credit line counts against you when evaluating your debt.
If you don't have self control, a credit card is a bad idea. If you do have self control, a credit card can make value for you just by spending on things you were already going to buy.
I remember a little while back reading something about how Financial Literacy was introduced as a way for the banks to avoid regulation, pushing the responsibility to individuals rather than face government pressure to change.
While there's some truth to this, there's also a ton of things companies are required to display prominently when lending money. Most people know about the interest rate, but there's a lot of other numbers just as important to understand.
It's not funding, plenty of money gets spent on education. It doesn't matter to kids that don't have reinforcement that education matters. Financial literacy specifically isn't going to help, because it's too abstract to students that aren't working jobs, paying rent, and buying their own food.
The marshmallow experiment is more a measure of how honest adults have been to that kid, than some inherent virtue. Sometimes when you delay gratification, you get robbed.
You're getting downvoted but my friend is a 5th grade school teacher in California and confirmed to me that for years now when her students get to 5th grade they can't read or even sound out basic words and she's required to keep passing them to middle school.
Teachers all over the US are saying kids can't read. Combined with the fact that teachers have to strictly follow their curriculums which are not designed for these kids, that means American kids will continue to not develop literacy skills. IMO it's a valid question to ask: what are we doing about that?