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For our ancestors, even as recently as the 19th century, survival skills were hands-on. If you didn't know how to build a house, farm, hunt, butcher animals, sew, and cook, you couldn't provide well for your family. Money skills were largely worthless.
It’s completely different today. Providing for yourself and your family requires knowing how to earn enough money, spend wisely, save for future needs, protect your assets, maintain good credit, and build an emergency fund. More importantly, you need to be able to apply these skills.
As critical as money skills are, actions are more important than words. Unfortunately, our actions show we don’t value those skills.
While requirements to graduate from high school differ from state to state, it's common that courses in English, math, science, social studies, the arts, and a foreign language are necessary to graduate. A course in personal finance is rarely required. A young adult who graduates with good English and math skills, a knowledge of history, a grounding in science, and some fluency in French is still not equipped with the money skills needed to survive in our modern society
Some states, including South Dakota, do require a half-year course in either personal finance or economics to graduate from high school, but there is no requirement they choose personal finance. There is a laughable difference between personal finance and economics. Economics isn’t something that is understood by economists. A course in economics may be good for philosophical late-night discussions at your favorite pub, but it doesn’t come close to equipping you with essential financial life skills.
Ironically, there is one instance where a course on personal finance is required: after a person files for bankruptcy and before it is discharged. "While the requirement has good intentions, the education is far too late," says Bonnie Spain, executive director of the Rushmore Consumer Credit Resource Center, Rapid City, SD.
Despite the importance of knowledge in personal finance, it is only half of the equation when it comes to developing money skills. The other half is the ability to apply the knowledge. If personal financial knowledge isn’t put into action, it is essentially worthless.
