Accidentally Financially Illiterate?

In my 30-some years of life, I have been fortunate to do some pretty interesting things, work in some really interesting places, and with interesting people. As a Veteran, I have been here, there, and everywhere. I have also experienced a level of diversity that enabled me to have an appreciation for varying backgrounds and cultures. Focusing specifically on the people, regardless of differences of the people, place of birth, race, religion, economic status, and education, there has been one constant about all of them and myself. We were all somehow ignorant about money.

In hindsight, I ask myself, “How is this possible?”

During my time in the U.S. Army, I worked with people with GEDs, High School diplomas, Undergraduate degrees, Graduate degrees, and Doctorate degrees. What I found fascinating is that we were all collectively of the same mind concerning money. In fact, I found that those lower enlisted soldiers with only a High School diploma were making the same really bad financial decisions as the Commissioned Officer with a Graduate degree. How?

Entertain these questions, please.

During High School, how much did you learn about money, debt, credit, bank accounts, or investments?

During your Undergraduate study, how much did you learn about money, debt, credit, bank accounts, or investments?

Same for Graduate school and your Doctoral program.

Now, if you learned all the things about the items I listed…do you have debt (excluding a mortgage)?

If you learned very little to nothing, have you ever asked yourself why?

How is it that something so significant in our lives receives almost no attention in our education? In my personal opinion, understanding personal finance fresh out of High School would be much more beneficial than busting my butt for an A- in Pre-Calculus.

Why don’t our teachers tell us to be very careful with credit cards?

Why don’t we do scholastic exercises so that we understand the real cost of a car loan?

In our math courses, why aren’t we assigned problems that test our understanding of interest?

In our humanities courses, why are we not warned about the dangers of “keeping up with the Joneses?”

During our senior year of High School, why are we not given a notional job during week one and then taught about establishing a bank account, understand checking vs savings, taxes (gross), investing, and the reality of the cost of living by the time we graduate [rent, insurance, car payment, utilities, phone, internet, etc]?

Time to share an unpopular opinion. It seems obvious to me that our ignorance is institutionally encouraged. Moreover, I have come to believe that there is a benefit to the existence of financially-ignorant masses drowning in debt. How is it financially smart for a young adult to take on tens of thousands of dollars in college debt, a credit card or three, and a car loan before they are 22? Then after graduation from college, you are expected to get a nicer car, and buy a home. All to spend the rest of your life paying it off. That’s crazy!

Can you imagine an entire 2021 graduating class of High School seniors with a solid understanding of personal finance!? Hundreds of thousands of young adults that approached debt wisely, understood credit, and used money as a tool!

Without this knowledge, we are basically walking into the wilderness with a broken compass, hoping and praying we make it to our destination [retirement] on the other side. Maybe we will find a working compass along the way. Maybe we will link up with someone and try to make the trek with them. Maybe we will spend a decade learning increasingly advanced wilderness survival techniques so that we understand all the things in this vast forest…or maybe just a tree. During our journey, we see people sleeping on the ground with no sleeping bag or provisions. Others are being chased by a forest creature called Debt. And others have built beautiful tree houses and have no intention of finding a way out.  

What if we could walk into that same wilderness with a functioning compass, a GPS, some basic bush craft training, and a fully loaded survival bag?

What if we started our adult lives educated about the things that matter?