Schools have long been told that they should focus on the 3 R’s – Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmatic.  Kids, meanwhile have routinely balked that much of what they learn will have no practical effect once they leave school.k  Of course, kids fail to recognize that learning a wide variety of subjects exposes you to different areas which can influence career choice, prepare you for college and, perhaps most importantly, teach you how to think in different situations.  But, schools can easily make the 3 R’s relevant and applicable to daily life.  Schools need to teach basic budgeting.

Back when I was in school, we had a home economics class.  That class was considered a “girls” class and focused mostly on baking cupcakes and sewing on a button.  Little if any attention was paid to how to handle money.  Now, ignorance on basic money handling is a major factor in our current economic problems.

People don’t seem to understand the concepts of not spending more than they have, of making a plan for the future and of living without credit cards.  I know people who are currently out of a job.  None of those individuals have taken the basic steps necessary to handle this crisis.  More than one is living as a roommate with a friend in a house or apartment.  In each case, the jobless person has failed to cut expenses and look for alternative sources of income.  They have maintained their gym memberships, data plans on their cell phones, subscriptions to online games, continued going out for dining and drinks and some have even continued making unnecessary clothes purchases.

And these are not all young people.  These are  folks in their 20s and 30s.  These are people who should have learned the basics of understanding cash flow.  When asked, all one of these guys could tell me was, “I hope to have a job by the end of the month.”  That’s not a plan.  In the meantime, they are falling farther and farther behind on rent and credit card payments.

This is symptomatic of our wide scale econimic problems.  People failed to understand how much house they could afford.  The simple idea that if you can’t accumulate enough for a down payment, you won’t be able to pay the mortgage has escaped too many home buyers.  It has become much too acceptable to borrow money from a bank to buy a shirt, which is what credit card purchases are.  The idea of saving for retirement or paying for one’s own health care have been replaced in our society by the idea that government will take care of those things.  How much differently would everyone live if we could not expect to receive a social security check or medicare health insurance when we are old?

Our public schools can change this.  Not many people will use trigonometry after high school or college.  Everyone will have to look at a paycheck and decide what to do with it.