April is Financial Literacy Month. You know financial literacy is in troubles when they dedicate a month to it! Because today is April 1, I thought we could start off with a list of the reasons to be financially literate, following the example of other famous top ten lists.
Top ten reasons to be financially literate:
1. Because being financially literate is smart and sexy!
2. Because it is useful to know that ARM has to do with mortgages and is not a rock band;
3. Because 401(k) is the worse name that could be given to pensions and you still cannot figure out how anyone came up with it;
4. Because you are tired of having to get endless stock market tips from your brother-in-law;
5. Because you would love to criticize banks but do not know what to say;
6. Because you need topics to share with your barber/hair-dresser, taxi drivers, and bar tenders that make you look rich and cool;
7. Because everybody talks about the financial crisis and you have no clues what is going on and whom to blame other than banks;
8. Because you have time to spare now that unemployment is really high and nobody seems to be able to find a job;
9. Because you want to protect granny from scams;
10. Because you want to mathematically prove that the Lexus your neighbor drives with such pride was a bad financial decision.
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3 comments:
Great comment! "Financial Literacy is in big trouble"
If you would like to learn more about it, we play CASHFLOW 101 on Sundays in Downtown Vancouver. It is free and everybody is welcome.
E-mail me at aidualc_pg@hotmail.com
Hi, your blog is really nice & wonderful, while reading it I truly like it.
mba
Ms. Lusardi -- I read your suggestion in today's NY Times (April 25) about adding Financial Literacy to high school curriculums across the US. I could not agree with you more. This seems so obvious to me. I recall hearing Robert Schiller speak at an annual meeting I attended, and hearing him recommend spending many dollars to educate the US populace on personal finance. I've always felt that your solution is more comprehensive and cost effective, and that the only thing preventing a very practical idea like this from occurring is the fractious nature of our state educational system. You have a voice -- please use it. This idea must gain a lot of strength in the national discourse. This is the only way to get the bureaucratic state school sytems to change. It looks like the consumer is getting his balance sheet back in line, with credit statistics improving. The
sad part about this is that most of it is as a result of a rise in personal bankruptcy. It is so strange to me that (having grown up in the US educational system) we can spend multiple years teaching and reteaching our children US History, and yet we can let them graduate without having taught them how to balance a checkbook, or how much money they need in order to take out a loan, that credit card debt is not tax deductible, etc.
Use your voice to help rectify this oversight in our educational system.
Sincerely,
Richard Slocum
Director Portfolio Management
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
rslocum@rwjf.org
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