• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Financially Mint

Learn how to manage money in university

  • Start Here
    • Why Should I Care?
    • Budgeting in 10 Minutes
    • Snazzy Saving Hacks
    • Make More Money
    • Adulting
  • Blog
  • About
    • Media
  • Resources
    • Apps & Software
    • Books
    • Financial Education
  • Contact
  • Hire me!

Why They Don’t Teach us About Money in School

16th March 2018

money in school

The reason I created this website in the first place was because of this: lack of financial education in school.

It made me angry and frustrated that governments simply don’t believe it’s an essential part of our education. Ever since I took notice of this huge lack of education, I’ve been thinking and writing a lot on the topic – but I’ve never had a proper sit down and thought about the why. Why have governments so royally messed up on this one? So I did a bit of research and asked a few questions – and I think I have a few answers.

money in schools

 

Times have changed

This is how it worked before: study hard, get good grades and get a high paying job. Once you get the job, stay with the company for 40 years and in exchange they’ll pay you a pension with benefits and rewards.

It’s all very fancy and dandy but times have indeed changed. In the past 50 years the pension system, the tax system and the legal system have evolved and changed drastically. Now, you’re responsible for your own retirement and you’re the one who has to make sure you’ll have enough money at 70. So yay, government has decided to give us a bit more of space and independence (I’d say that’s a good thing). But there’s just one issue – we have no idea how.

Schools are still teaching us the whole get good grades and a high paying job deal – but the truth is, that’s not enough anymore. Now, people are job-hopping, the economy has had a few crashes and there’s a lot of robots about. If you want benefits, a secure retirement and something stable, a job isn’t the answer. Financial education is. And schools haven’t caught up yet.

 

Teachers don’t know

Working on from the last point, teachers are older than the students (normally). Since they’ve been taught through the old education system, they too have no idea about personal finance, and therefore don’t feel capable of teaching it themselves. As you see, it’s a vicious circle.

Governments and financial entities have to step in and offer education to the teachers before it can follow on to the students.

Teachers are also under a lot of pressure to get the students passing exams and getting good grades. This means they prioritize other subjects such as maths and chemistry, leaving personal finance forgotten next to sex ed.

Not only that, but personal finance is that: personal. If the teacher’s financial situation is a mess, they’re unlikely to know how to teach it to students.

So you see how it is – not only do the governments have to educate teachers on personal finance, but they also have to help them improve their own financial situation. This means fixing previous mistakes, encouraging self-education and self-improvement. Financial education starts with the individual, and will governments be bothered to help the individual teachers? Considering the current low pay and pension cuts, I think we have quite some way to go.

 

money in schools
so basically tax is this huge animal…

Parents don’t know

We learn a lot from our parents – habits, politeness, cooking, etc. Another big thing we learn from them: money. If parents take time to teach their children the important aspects of money and some good financial habits, the child will grow up with the essentials of financial education. But if the parents have no idea about finance… surprise surprise, neither will the kids.

This is especially true if the parents have bad financial habits: constantly in debt, making bad decisions, complaining about the lack of money. All this influences the child and will lead to future financial ignorance as well as bad money habits.  

So once again, governments would have to step in and help the individual parents sort out their own finances before they could start relying on them to bring up financially aware kids.

 

No one knows where to start

From what it seems, no one really knows where to start. No matter how many times we shout ‘we don’t know what are taxes! Or mortgages! Or venture capitalism!’, the system will still be like ‘but what do we teach them?’.

Ok so maybe I’m being a bit mean – the British government did in fact add personal finance into the education curriculum in 2014. It’s now compulsory for schools to teach it in their maths and citizenship classes But guess what? Nothing has changed.

Why is that? Because the curriculum and teaching methods are lacking. And we shouldn’t be surprised: half of students dislike maths, reading, history, economy, etc. Simply because the education system is antiquated and we’re still teaching with boring theory books, memorisation techniques and lectures. But that’s another rant I won’t go on; the simple fact is that students aren’t being taught well in any subject, which is why personal finance isn’t any different.

 

Experts think people aren’t interested

Ewww.. finance? Is that some kind of disease?

Experts seem to think that the general population isn’t interested in learning the basics of money.

I have to say I disagree. I bet if you went into a classroom and shouted ‘Who wants to be rich?’ everyone would raise their hands. Once again, it’s about using effective teaching methods and making the topic interesting: activities, real life experiments, interactive games, etc.

In college, we get our first proper taste of money. More freedom, less supervision from parents, etc. Because of that, students go all out with their money: ‘let’s all see who can spend their student loan money the fastest’ (we’ve all done it). Honestly, it’s fine: college is there to experiment, to try out the weird stuff and allow the crazy to flow. If you get kicked out of your accommodation well that’s on you – better now than at 30 with a family.

Students want to go crazy with their money simply because they think budgeting is boring, saving means more restrictions and investing is only for the rich. But the thing is that financial education isn’t just about that – it’s about being aware, being in control of what happens and knowing what to do. Want to waste half your student loans on cheap alcohol? Go ahead, just make sure that you’re aware and know how to deal with all the problems that come next.

What I’m trying to say is that people are interested in managing their money and being financially stable – we’re just living in a culture that doesn’t teach us how to.

 

Consumerism

A slightly darker reason for the lack of financial education: it’s easier for others to steal your money.

Ignorance is bliss? Yes, but not when you’re money is slowly disappearing into the pockets of others. Banks, companies, media corporations, governments – they make more money when you don’t know what to do with your finances. The more debt you accumulate on a credit card the more you’ll have to pay back to the company. The more adverts out there convincing you to buy a new car the more money you’ll spend on something you should be buying second hand.

It’s scary and it’s sad, but I think we can all agree that it’s true.

It’s also the reason why people are scared of money and believe that it’s ‘evil’. All the financial jargon makes it hard to understand what really is going on. All we are taught is that we need money for food and for a roof over their heads, so we cling onto something secure, something stable: a job. And many times, it’s a job we dislike, or even worse – we tolerate. This common occurrence is called the rat race and it’s what a large part of our society is based on. A discussion for another time. 

 

money in schools
just look at that APR

It’s not all bad news:

I may have painted a pretty negative picture of our governments and society as a whole. Although there is a lot of work to be done on financial education, I’m happy to say quite a few organisations and charities have been campaigning for financial education for years.

Here are a few of them:

CAP (Christians Against Poverty): This British charity is all about counseling people out of debt and helping them back on their feet.

Young-Money: An organisation with resources on helping children understand money. They create programmes for schools to teach personal finance to kids.

MyBnk: Another cool organisation creating programmes and workshops to help young children learn about budgeting, saving, loans, etc.

The Money Charity: Very awesome charity that works on products and services teaching finance in schools – they also talk to policymakers and try to change the laws.

There’s a lot going on in other parts of the world. I see more and more personal finance blogs in America taking on financial education and talking about curriculums and the different steps to take. There’s work to do, but at least we’re getting started.

 

What we can do about it

It’s true that a lot of it lies in the hands of the government and the education system. They need to work not only on implementing an efficient personal finance class in the curriculum, but they also need to focus on the individuals: the teachers and the parents. And that’s not always easy.

As a member of society, we can also help out. You don’t need to go all out and create a blog (#me), but I think one great way to increase awareness is to simply talk more about money with friends, family and strangers. Money is still a taboo topic, and asking someone how much they make is like asking them how their sex life is doing – it simply gets awkward. So let’s make it less awkward: talk to your friends about your current money problems, ask them how they’re dealing with theirs and try to find a solution together. What you’ll learn will be with you for life.

Spread the love

Filed Under: BlogLeave a Comment

❮  PREVIOUS POST

Money Experiment 7: (Not) Earning Money with Surveys

NEXT POST  ❯

Best Money Saving Apps Every Student Needs

Primary Sidebar

Hey hey 👋

My name's Araminta and I'm freelance FinTech Copywriter.

I started Financially Mint to help other 20 something year olds learn about money and fix their finances early in life 💪

As seen on

Testimonials

‘I immediately loved your site and though I’ve been working for the last 6 years, I wish I had followed a lot of your advice when in university. I should have worked part time to earn some extra money and invested it. I would be much further along if I had done that.’ – Jalpan from Passive Income Engineering

Categories

Recent Posts

  • 5 Ways to Invest in Yourself in Your Twenties
  • How Life Design Interviews Will Help Get Your ‘Dream Career’
  • How Career Building and Exploration Allowed FG to Earn a $500,000 Salary
  • Career Capital: What it is and How to Build it
  • The 5 Rules to Effectively Manage People 👦

financiallymint

financiallymint
Financially Mint is on another break! ☕ I will Financially Mint is on another break! ☕

I will be living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the next few months, and then hopefully heading to Australia. 
My plans for the next year:

I'm putting the career testing theory into practice. My next career test is working for an NGO here in Kuala Lumpur. This week will be my first week. I will be working with sex trafficking survivors and I've also been asked to do some financial education presentations to help the staff.

After that the plan is to move to Melbourne, Australia, and do my next career test: consulting. If that doesn't work out I will try another career test which may be more achievable: business development in a startup. Thanks to the amazing career books that I've read, I'm pretty confident I can get an interesting job. We'll see how it rolls. 🏀

How am I funding this? I'm very excited to say that I've managed to grow my part-time freelancing income to a full-time income that can sustain me in South East Asia (I would need to work full-time in Europe). I'm calling myself a 'Freelance FinTech Writer'. Rent is crazy cheap (like 300€/month) and it's literally cheaper to eat out than cook. I'm still able to save 15% of my income. 🎉🎉 The increase in clients and pay has been thanks to all the effort I put into Financially Mint, and to some crazy cold emailing and networking in the past few months. 
After some thought, I concluded that learning mark-up language (HTML + CSS) was a more efficient use of my time than writing blog posts and working on FM... so I am now taking a break to learn some basic coding and decide what to do next.

I will still be podcasting and taking part in the FI community on Twitter and everywhere else... so I'll still be seeing you around 😉

To our success 🎉🎉
Only 30% of jobs are posted online. 🙄 Let's sa Only 30% of jobs are posted online. 🙄

Let's say you've got a list of career paths to test. You've figured out a direction, you know which sector you want to work in and you've got some cool companies in mind.

But then what? How do you get an internship in the company you really want to work for? How do you get a job in that specific NGO? How do you get them to notice you? 🤔

In FM's latest post I share a strategy that I am still testing but seems to work - copied from a book titled 'Designing your Life' by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans:

The strategy: Conducting 'Life Design' Interviews. .
A Life Design Interview is basically meeting the person that has your 'dream career' for coffee. ☕

You find someone who is working at the company you want to work for, in the sector you want to work for or simply has a position you're interested in, and you reach out to them (LinkedIn helps). You ask about their story, their position, how they got to where they are and their advice to people starting out. 
This is what I've been doing for the past month in Edinburgh, and of the 40 people I contacted, I met 8 of them for coffee, my goal to simply learn about their story.

With an added bonus: Trust. ✅

Not only did I learn stuff about working in a startup, or as a content writer or working in an NGO, but I also built a trusted connection. It's those connections that help you find the hidden jobs, the dream careers and the best opportunities.

Check out FM's latest post for a proper run down on Life Design interviews. 💪 (Last week we organised the FI Europe podcast retreat! An amazing 4 days doing speeches, masterminds, debates, boat trips, beach and surfing. Post on this coming soon 🔥)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #careerbuilding #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #fieurope #lifedesign #interviews
Investing in yourself now will return bucket loads Investing in yourself now will return bucket loads in the future. 🔮

I talk a lot about this on Financially Mint - how taking the time to build career capital and explore career paths will allow you to find a career of best personal fit, which will then make you the money you need.

But it is true that I am personally at the very start of this journey, and so can't offer many examples of this working. 🤷‍♀️ Well today, this changes as I interview the Financial Gladiator, who did exactly that.

He went to university to study business in Poland, and finished his masters in Australia. In the meantime, he was doing internships, making connections, building skills and beefing up his portfolio. 
He says it himself: ' I always looked to add experience and skills to my repertoire rather than dollars' 💸.
.
7 internships later in several different countries and industries and a lot of hustling, moving around and learning about what career fitted him best, FG ended up in a job that paid him a six figure salary. This kept on snowballing, and in his early thirties he hit a salary of over $500,000. .
That goes to show how much investing in yourself can return in the future.
.
$500,000 annual salary doesn't need to be your goal, but it still goes to show that you'll make the bulk of your money after investing in your own career. 📈

A great interview filled with actionable career advice and FG's complete story, check out FM's latest blog post! (Edinburgh castle 🔥)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #studentmoney #studenthacks #studentlife #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #careerbuilding #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #work
Most of us don't know what we want to do in our tw Most of us don't know what we want to do in our twenties 🤷‍♀️. And that's absolutely normal.

But that's why we don't want to be committing to one thing - who know what you might want to do in 5 years? 🧐

Instead of committing, why not be exploring, investigating and testing career paths. But how can you do this cleverly without being a typical 'millennial-career-hopper'? By building career capital at the same time.

This means that every career test you do will help you build skills, connections and a more solid portfolio. If you have no idea where to start, here are some examples of jobs/activities that can help you build career capital:

1. Working for a growing organisation with a growing performance: this could be consulting, a startup - anywhere with a good mentor and team 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
.
2. Graduate studies - for those who want to work in research, a think tank, etc.
.
3. Building a valuable and transferable skill - skills such as writing, programming, designing, data science, etc will always be useful in the future 💻
.
4. Creating content - you don't always need a shiny piece of paper or a medal to show that you've done something. Creating your own thing can be just as useful.
.
And much more amazing career advice... in FM's latest blog post 🤓
.
(I’m running out of pictures to post so here’s one of a beautiful evening in Edinburgh) .
.
.
.
.
.
#financiallymint #budget #budgeting #personalfinance #savinghacks #makemoney #savemoney #money #studentmoney #studenthacks #studentlife #shoestringbudget #moneyhacks #moneysavinghacks #financialeducation #financialfreedom #adulting #savingtricks #earnmoney #lifeadvice #counsel #careeradvice #retirement #investing #peoplemanagement #skillbuilding #career #selfimprovement #inspiring #work
Load More… Follow on Instagram
This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error: API requests are being delayed for this account. New posts will not be retrieved.

Log in as an administrator and view the Instagram Feed settings page for more details.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Footer

Come join the FM tribe 💪

Copyright © 2021 Financially Mint · Custom site by Moonsteam Design · Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 · 'Financially Mint Custom Theme by Moonsteam Design on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in