What Our Education System Is Lacking

We all want financial freedom, yet we’re taught nothing about it.

With graduation being less than 100 days away, my mind is flooded with thoughts about life after college, life outside of what seems like a utopian society compared to the real world. Marist College has made me really comfortable, probably too comfortable, with everyday life. When my stomach is growling, North End Dining is just a few steps away. When I have a fever and my body is aching, Health Services is there to evaluate me the same day I call to make an appointment. Everything is in such close proximity and life is just easy here. I’ve been a student for so long, more than half my life, that I’m afraid of the change that’s approaching me. Life after Marist is the true test of adulthood and, financially, I’m not ready. 

For many years of my life I’ve sat in classrooms where I was taught “book knowledge.” Did I find that helpful? Yes, but it’s not so useful outside of the four classroom walls. The knowledge I’ve gained in history, language arts, biology, etc., won’t help me when it comes to the everyday rhythm of life. How does knowing sine, cosine and tangent help me when it comes to finding a reasonably priced apartment? What use is analyzing works of literature when trying to figure out how to pay off student debt or which payment plan is better than the others? I’m not trying to say that the things we learn in high school and college aren’t helpful in shaping us to be knowledgeable human beings, but they aren’t enough to help us live successful and financially comfortable lives. Where is the information booklet on how to succeed once school is over? Why is it that I never learned about filing for taxes, how to build credit, which loans to avoid and I can only imagine so much more?

Our education system should teach us how to be financially competent. It should warn us about avoiding loans and being slaves to lenders. We should be learning how to maximize the use of our incomes, grow wealth, invest, and save. To be prepared for life after college we need to focus on how to balance our checkbooks, budget our money and invest in our future. Financial education should be a requirement in college. Marist provides a one credit financial literacy class and a few workshops for seniors about bank accounts, planning, saving for retirement, etc., but even those things aren’t enough. Financial knowledge should be in our curriculum for the simple reason that it’s what we need to hear. It’s the most immediate aspect we face in our lives after college and we’re not being taught about it. What’s the use of having a high income if we won’t know how to manage it? Finances are the practical things we should be learning about but don’t, unless we teach ourselves. 

So enough of talking about what “should be.” What do we do from here? Self-educate. We need to educate ourselves in order to become more financially competent. In order to be successful we need to listen to those who are successful, the people that made it happen for themselves. Recently I began my journey towards financial independence. I’m starting with Dave Ramsey, author of “The Total Money Makeover,” and Robert Kiyosaki, author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” Both authors discuss how to make money work for you, how to build wealth and how to control it, instead of allowing it to control us. Ramsey has said, “Debt is so ingrained into our culture that most Americans can’t even envision a car without a payment, a house without a mortgage, a student without a loan and credit without a card. We’ve been sold debt with such repetition and with such fervor that most folks can’t conceive of what it would be like to have no payments.” Our education system could have the power to dismantle these parts of our culture and guide us towards financial freedom and success, yet it doesn’t. 

What’s important is that we follow in the footsteps of the people who did it. The people who didn’t come from wealth, the people who didn’t inherit money, the people who have lost it all and still became millionaires. Dave Ramsey is one of those people. The resources are out there, we just need to find them and consume them as much as we can. Financial success is not so far away and with the help of financial education, any one of us could be next.