{"id":10554,"date":"2018-08-10T10:28:13","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T16:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=10554"},"modified":"2018-08-10T10:28:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T16:28:13","slug":"when-financial-literacy-training-wheels-disappear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/08\/when-financial-literacy-training-wheels-disappear.html","title":{"rendered":"When financial literacy training wheels disappear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

Financial literacy \u2014 that\u2019s the new watchword.\u00a0 How can we expect people to save \u2014 for retirement, for a rainy day \u2014 if they don\u2019t understand, fundamentally, how finances work.\u00a0 How does interest work?\u00a0 What\u2019s inflation all about?\u00a0 How would one even begin to start investing?\u00a0 With respect to the first two of these items, I\u2019ve generally had the sense that people might know how these terms are defined but don\u2019t have a feel for what they really mean in the real world \u2014 but I came across a claim the other day that young adults don\u2019t necessarily even know that.<\/p>\n

At my column at Forbes<\/a>, I wrote a while back that, in the same way as community organizations sponsor \u201cwellness fairs\u201d they would do well to sponsor \u201cfinancial wellness fairs.\u201d\u00a0 Now there are reports in the news about expanding financial literacy courses for high school students, so that they learn the basics of banking, investment, and budgeting.<\/p>\n

But (while I have a larger article on the topic sitting as a draft in my Forbes WordPress\u00a0editor) I wanted to collect some reader thoughts on a couple issues here:<\/p>\n

First, it seems to me that bank accounts for children have always had a certain \u201ctraining wheels\u201d element to them, as kids learn to deposit their money in a bank, watch it earn interest, and then withdraw it, so that they might save up for a long-desired item.\u00a0 But a child with a bank account cannot learn about interest from that bank account \u2014 not in the year 2018, when, to pull the example of the bank statement in front of me, my son earns 0.02% interest.\u00a0 That\u2019s not 0.02 as a fraction.\u00a0 That\u2019s 0.02 percent, or 0.0002 as a fraction.\u00a0 \u00a0For that matter, the idea of a \u201csavings account\u201d in general, as a means of earning a moderate degree of interest while still keeping money accessible, really doesn\u2019t exist any longer, yet there\u2019s a great deal of hand-wringing over how few people have savings accounts.<\/p>\n

And, second \u2014 well, this is more of an open-ended question:\u00a0 think back to your young adult years.\u00a0 How did you learn to budget?\u00a0 How did you learn about mutual funds and credit cards and mortgages and the like?\u00a0 I\u2019m still putting together my thoughts on this and would appreciate a mix of perspectives.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AMoney_Cash.jpg; By Jericho [CC BY 3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Financial literacy \u2014 that\u2019s the new watchword.\u00a0 How can we expect people to save \u2014 for retirement, for a rainy day \u2014 if they don\u2019t understand, fundamentally, how finances work.\u00a0 How does interest work?\u00a0 What\u2019s inflation all about?\u00a0 How would one even begin to start investing?\u00a0 With respect to the first two of these items, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":5466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[473],"class_list":["post-10554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-financial-literacy"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen financial literacy training wheels disappear<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Financial literacy -- that's the new watchword.\u00a0 How can we expect people to save -- for retirement, for a rainy day -- if 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