• Rediphile@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Yes, just like how we all learned about how important it is to pay off credit card debt and the benefits of long term investing while in school (aka compound interest…in math class). Yet far too many people act like this is something that needs to be added to the curriculum when it’s already there.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      FWIW, I don’t think we all learned that, they literally never taught that in my school. Like, they literally never explicitly mentioned “credit card debt” or “long-term investments” or any investments really in my classes, and I think they should have.

      Of course it’s gonna be different from school to school, state to state, and country to country.

      • winky9827b@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I was in high school in the mid 90s, and the primary focus of our economics class was balancing checkbooks type stuff. Definitely not loans, predatory interest rates, revolving credit, or anything else that would be remotely useful in today’s economy.

      • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Once isn’t enough for retention for everyone. I think I remember that stuff because my parents discussed it when I asked. However I don’t know who discussed what in other homes. I think more exposure to real world applications of critical thinking and accounting will only help.

      • Rediphile@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I strongly suspect there were both word problems used in your math classes and that compound interest was in the curriculum. But maybe there is somewhere there actually isn’t. Generally, the curriculum documents are all publicly available online too so feel free to take a look. Although finding the curriculum from 10+ years ago can be hard if there have been changes.

        Had you really never seen something like ‘Joe currently owes $300 on his credit card with an annual interest rate of 22%. How much will he owe 2 years from now if he makes no payments and no new purchases’?

        All you need is the compound interest formula. It could be about investments or a ball accelerating due to gravity and it’s still just that same formula with different numbers plugged in.

        • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Had you really never seen something like ‘Joe currently owes $300 on his credit card with an annual interest rate of 22%. How much will he owe 2 years from now if he makes no payments and no new purchases’?

          Honestly, no, I hadn’t seen anything like that in any of my classes, but the thing is even if I did it’s not worth anything just having those words and not actually teaching it and relating it to the real world and showing how it will affect us as adults when we are older. I 1000% didn’t have any teachers actively teaching specifically that using real-world things like credit cards that would matter to us students. For the most part I didn’t really have teachers actively teaching things like that, it almost felt more like they were going through the motions, I dunno maybe I just got unlucky.

          • Rediphile@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            K yeah, that sounds shitty and I’m sorry you had to deal with it. The fact that some of us, myself included, got quite lucky with good teachers who knew how to teach the content probably does make all the difference.