Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

I was deeply resentful of the school system in the USA by age 16. The only thing you ever heard, by word of mouth, was that taxes were paid yearly in April. I had the impression that if the stupid government is teaching me, they have an obligation/responsibility to see to it that I know something to basic as what I will have to do to avoid extreme penalization. After all, they went to the trouble of telling me to use condoms and not do drugs, shouldn't they cover things that will cause terrible harm to my life if it only takes a few minutes to teach?

By time I dutifully did my taxes in April when I turned 17, the IRS said that I owed them over $10,000 in penalties for not paying "quarterly taxes" on time - something I'd never heard of in my life. This was a huge sum for a 17 year old to try to come up with in the late 1990s, and ultimately the only way out was to fraudulently use a college loan to pay them - otherwise they would stalk me day and night with threatening letters and sanctions

So that's the story of why I'm not a patriot but an enemy of the state, they burned me before I even had the chance to reach adulthood.

That may be the case for universities or other institutions which are the last step before entering "active life".

However, up until high school, there are a bunch of subjects that are taught purely for the benefit of the students. I'm thinking about sports / physical education, geography, history, etc. I didn't use anything I learned in those during university and none of the job interviews I've been through touched on those either.

This is the reasoning behind the book Poor Dad Rich Dad, which to be fair makes quite a few good points about this stuff, and says you are left to your own devices because it isn't advantageous for govt, companies etc for you to be educated in these things. Good book to start off your 'financial intelligence' as Kiyosaki puts it. I particularly like how it is themed around the idea 'the rich don't work for money', and so the middle class bear much of the burden of the modern world.

False theories of poverty spread by people like yourself are the reason more people don't get the right advice to get out. They're told something crazy like "well yeah you just don't have enough money, too bad"

The guy I'm talking about has windfalls - and when they come he'll feel so bad he goes out with friends and blows $30 on a meal. If he changed his celebrations to $15 meals using a coupon clipped from the paper (I know he can, I've been with him I know his world and options) and saved the other $15, the next time he got an unexpected bill he would have the savings to cover it. (The definition of unexpected here is very loose - because for him it is very loose. Everything is "unexpected" and "unplanned" - but YES - a flat tire) He does this and before long his credit score starts to improve, before long he has balance free transfer offers, before long he is no longer throwing money at credit card interest but instead paying down the balance because he has 18 months 0 interest

My OTHER friend, who is now a millionaire, was earning the same super low income. But he was already investing based on this income by making hard compromises on day-to-day living. He is Asian, so has a completely different cultural background based on his immigrate parents believing one needs to save no matter how low their income. Yeah if he didn't get a better job he probably wouldn't have made it to the millions, but, on a poor salary he was already well on his way to home ownership and all the domino effect line of decisions that lead to lower and lower cost of living (once you're in a home equity is building instead of disappearing on rent) etc. even on the same low salary.

If I didn't know the Asian guy, I'd probably still be using your same line of argumentation - pretending that there is some lower limit where you "just don't have enough" but it is just such hogwash & excuses that got the poor where they are in 9 of 10 cases of poverty in the US at least. Clearly there is a huge difference with the 1 case or with cases in another country where the political system's own evils may cause it

There's a really complex/perverse thing here which I'm going to fumble with, so I hope the dear reader forgives.

This information is not available to the black community. Now, obviously, any black person is technically capable of tuning into the Fox News channel where Dave Ramsey has a show, or dial their radio to conservative radio stations where Dave Ramsey is broadcast. But in practical terms, Dave Ramsey is unavailable to black people. And they are actively discouraged by our culture from even finding out that he exists.

I became aware of this in a discussion with a black friend i which she believed something that was "sort of" untrue. It was something approximately like she believed that white people grow up in homes where certain concepts like basic personal finance are taught. This was so bizarre sounding to me, because my actual life experience was so different. I grew up in a poor "white trash" household. My parents were/are buried in debt up to their necks. Basic personal finance, the Ramsey flavor or otherwise, was simply not in the ether. I didn't grow up with Fox on the TV either, or anything even pretending to be news. I still don't generally watch Fox News, but am a Ramsey fan.

I believe my friend was technically wrong, but maybe directionally right. She was directionally right in the sense that even though Dave Ramsey wasn't in my household, it was culturally at least acceptable. If you're far enough left wing to where you can't bring yourself to listen to Fox News/conservative radio, you can maybe get by with Clark Howard combined with Planet Money. Still extremely white in culture and audience.

I hope we figure out some way to get past this. Because even the pitiful tools that are available aren't available to everyone.