I recently completed a personal finance class which opened my eyes to why so many Americans are in such bad shape financially. I found the class to be rather easy because I’m a financial geek on my own time (if you couldn’t tell) but a surprising number of other students were clueless in regards to the subject.
It does and doesn’t surprise me at the same time that there are people out there that fail to grasp the simple concepts of how things like credit cards work. There are multiple reasons for this in that some people just don’t care or they inherited bad financial skills from their parents. It’s not surprising to have a college graduate land a decent paying job and yet lives paycheck to paycheck due to horrible financial habits.
This class was optional and therefore that means most people will never partake in any sort of education related to finance in their lives. Personal finance should be mandatory because it would reduce a great number of problems related to personal finances in our country. The basic course I took goes through the fundamental concepts of various financial instruments such as CDs, investment accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance, etc.
Since, you really didn’t say, I am guessing this was a college course? What College? I would be interested in knowing more about this course and what they covered.