How did so many Americans get into home loans and mortgages that were going to blow up in their faces? Why are so many Americans in so much debt, yet they keep spending?
I am constantly amazed by peoples lack of basic finance skills. Not just the “how to balance a checkbook” kinda stuff either. I mean the big stuff like:
“Don’t spend more than you earn”
How can generations of Americans not have the basic tools required to understand their own bank or credit card statement? Even after some people have gone through a money crisis or a bankruptcy its amazing how their old spending habits reassert themselves.
I think that financial literacy should be a required course in high school. Not just balancing a checkbook, but understanding credit card percentages and debt. In some ways its even more important than geometry and algebra.
The voice of Warren Buffet a good one to listen to. “If you watch the pennies, the dollars watch themselves”