Financial Education in this Great Country

Everyday I get more concerned with the amount of financial education that we give in this country.  We have all kinds of classes that we teach our youth in the school system.  They cover a wide range of classes that vary in their usefulness in everyday life.  That is a whole other blog or a visit to "Who is smarter than a 5th grader."   I have a daughter in the 2nd grade and sometime I wonder if I could pass that grade.

What I am talking about is the way that we teach our youth and young adults about their financial security.  This includes credit cards, savings, investing, car purchases, home purchasing and debt in general.  These young adults are inundated with credit card applications and offer of cash or lines of credit from the time they are starting college.  As a society, this is accepted and we just assume that they can figure all of this out on their own.  The sad part is that some people are never able to figure out the financial aspect of being an adult.

These young adults armed with credit and without money to pay off any debts that are incurred.  They run up bad loans that impact their credit score.  They do not worry about it because they figure someone else will pay for it.  When they are ready to go out into the world and buy a home or a car, they have very poor credit. 

This I believe is a direct building block of some of the problems that we are seeing today.  We have a whole sector of the lending market that has collapsed that was helping these individuals.  Did we give them any more education on how to manage they financial health?  No, we did not.  We just found a way to give them more money and we should not be surprised by the outcome. 

I am not saying that people are not responsible for their own actions.  My point is, as a society, we all have a responsibility to help people figure their financial path out.  Until we educate people at a young age on these things, we can expect to see the foreclosures and banruptcies that we currently see.  The financial education is an important part of making a health economy.