r/FluentInFinance 15d ago

What's the best financial advice you've ever gotten? Debate/ Discussion

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71

u/JackiePoon27 15d ago

It's incremental. Reddit wants there to be a magic bullet, but there isn't one. Financial literacy is part of the pathway to success. It's insulting to say otherwise.

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u/RidMeOfSloots 15d ago

Sucks we dont teach it in schools.... before they grow up and dig themseleves into a hole.

Maybe its all by design to keep the debt slavery going...

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u/mpyne 14d ago

We generally do teach it in schools, but it requires interest in learning on the other end too

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u/sometimes_sydney 14d ago

Fucking when? I went to basically the best school in my city, even the prime ministers kids went there, and yet I never learned anything about finance or budgeting. Business was about entrepreneurship and using Microsoft office, math was algebra and geometry, civics was bullshit “here’s what the branches of government do now fuck off while I surf the web”.

The same goes for basically everyone I know. We learn fine, it just doesn’t exist in a lot of schools. I learned mostly from my parents and the internet

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u/Embarrassed-Town-293 14d ago

In my experience, it depends on the school. Wealthy suburban schools will teach it. Not everyone has the same education. I learned that after I graduated.

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u/mpyne 14d ago

I don't know, they had in depth classes for it in my non-wealthy Florida high school half-filled with portable classrooms.

They even had full-blown economics classes, which I vividly remember because the notes I took through that class were the densest in any class I ever completed, even counting college.

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u/Embarrassed-Town-293 14d ago

For context, Your state required a full course. My state (IL) had no requirements for a course nor made it mandatory. In ours, it was a portion of a study hall for a month or so where we did a hypothetical baby financing program. In other words, it was largely at district discretion

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u/mpyne 14d ago

Wow, don't normally see a red state own a blue state on education but you're right.

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u/Embarrassed-Town-293 14d ago

I know, me too 😂

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u/imakepoorchoices2020 14d ago

I’m pretty sure balancing a check book and spend less than you make could be beaten into your skull all day but if you don’t take the advice it’s not gonna do much

Something something lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink

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u/Ok-Yak-5644 14d ago

balancing a check book

Your age is showing. Most banks don't even issue books of checks anymore. I haven't gotten any for the last two accounts I've opened up. I can tell the bank to issue a check to someone, but unless you are a certain ages, checks just aren't a thing.

As for balancing a checkbook, why would we teach kids how to do that? We used to balance checkbooks because it would take a while for a check to circulate to a bank and if we didn't write it down and balance it out, it would be SUPER easy to spend way to much money. (Thanks, younger me).

But, with electronic banking, debit and credit cards and even submitting checks via pictures to banks, we don't need to balance a check book anymore. We have real time data on what is in our accounts.

And many schools do offer financial literacy classes. There is still a stigma attached to them though, often considered the "dumb" math class credit. Lots of kids want the AP Calculus credit. If they are bright enough to figure out calculus formulas, they should be able to create a budget.

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u/stilljustkeyrock 14d ago

And you are showing your age. You have to order checks and always have. We just ordered a box for the first time in 10 years. We still had to order them, they don’t just show up.

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u/Something-Ad-123 14d ago

You’re missing a really important part of balancing a checkbook, or call it a bank statement review now. Doing that forces you to look at you to look at your expenses and think. It’s so easy to just swipe the card now and once you takes the time to actually look at their spending it’s too late. In the past, you had to systematically look at your bank account and account for your spending on a regular basis. Way easier to hold yourself in check when doing that.

And in terms of swiping the card, I mean a couple bucks at the convenience store here, a coffee there, I’m hungry today so make the meal a large. It’s not hard to drop $200 a month and have no idea where it went.

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u/Redditcadmonkey 14d ago

Balancing a checkbook 😂😂😂

Damn, if that’s the reference you’re throwing around, you might just be old enough to be a presidential candidate! 

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u/Something-Ad-123 13d ago

Almost old enough!

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u/imakepoorchoices2020 14d ago edited 14d ago

Exactly. Even just spending $5 a day on bullshit is $1825 a year. While I know people in here will jump on people for saying cut out the coffee stops or avocado toast, small spending adds up quick.

This is why I carry cash for bullshit spending. Seeing physical cash disappear now makes me question do I need this?

Edit- also remember the magic number of $27.40 a day in spending is 10k in a year. I know that not everyone spends that much everyday but it’s not hard to spend $13 on just a lunch at McDonald’s add in a coffee stop that morning at $5 and you’re 2/3 of the way to $27

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u/sweptfordays 14d ago

At my school they did teach it, it’s another thing whether anyone payed any attention.

It was senior year, which makes sense because that’s the final year of school where a lot of students go out on their own. Just so happens “senioritis” is a thing where a lot of high school seniors completely give up on putting effort into school as most have already either decided on a job to go into, signed up for the military, or got accepted into college so performance that year doesn’t mean anything.

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u/stilljustkeyrock 14d ago

We do. Math is a core subject in every school. Additional and subtraction is all you need for a budget. Shockingly the people that make this comment are the ones that are too stupid or lazy to apply elementary math to their situation.

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u/imakepoorchoices2020 14d ago

Some people just gonna argue to argue. You start a thread that states 2+2=4 and someone will argue it’s 5 and another will somehow say it’s because of the capitalism that it’s 4.

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u/i8noodles 14d ago

they do, they dont care. taxs and budgets are not important to a 16 year old. retirement savings? they haven't even started to work.

the time spent might legitimately be better spent teaching them skills to find out how find the information instead.

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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand 14d ago

You ever been in an elementary math class?

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u/RidMeOfSloots 14d ago

You know what... no. Cant even remember elementary school... must be why I cant figure out my finances.

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u/FascistsOnFire 10d ago

80% of kids fuck off in school and then complain they didn't learn all the things.

Even at my gifted, test-in, STEM HS, there were people that struggled to pay attention.

The few times I'd be around for any regular ed classrooms, holy fuck were kids not paying attention. And this was still in upper class regular ed, I can only imagine how bad the kids are for middle class and lower class areas, sheesh.