Personal Finance Taught in New Hampshire High Schools?

By Jim on January 2nd, 2009

Well duh. This is something that should have been required in schools since day one.

Rep. Don Petterson has a New Year’s resolution for high-schoolers across the state: They will learn to manage their finances.

The Brentwood state representative has filed a bill that would require high-school economics classes to include lessons on personal financial literacy, everything from how to balance a checkbook, follow a budget, understand credit cards and buy homes.

As the nation suffers financial meltdown and recession, the bill has garnered support from both sides of the aisle, with co-sponsors including Manchester Democratic Sen. Lou D’Allesandro and Raymond Republican Sen. Jack Barnes.

“It’s particularly timely I think,” said Petterson, a Democrat. “It’s quite clear that the poor decisions that people have made as individuals have contributed mightily to our overall economic problem.”

New Hampshire already requires students to take an economics course before they graduate. This bill would revise that curriculum to include personal finances in addition to broad macroeconomic concepts. Petterson said he’d been in touch with organizations that would provide free course materials. He even called 16 colleges across the country to check if any of them require applicants to have studied macroeconomics. (None do.)

I’ve been angry about the lack of personal finance classes in schools for a long time. I was fortunate enough to take an economics class that happened to cover some of it while I was in high school. But a lot of schools don’t offer anything comparable.

Instead of wasting time and money on stupid classes like algebra, trig and calculus. Let’s face it most kids are NOT going to use any of that…some that go into certain industries will but most won’t so why are we forcing them to spend the time taking it but we don’t teach them how to balance a checkbook? Give me a break! We ought to make sure that high school graduates understand mortgages, credit cards, checking accounts and all of the basic personal finance stuff.

Good job, Representative Petterson. Thumbs up for this idea, big time.