Nice one Keef. I do think your cartoon art would be a good investment, but not Mallard Fillmore.

I teach a consumer economics class, and what I always tell my students is, "I wish I had known how to make a budget when I was young. We would have lived so much better."

My high school had a class like this back in the '80s. It replaced World History, which could be the basis for an interesting argument (without economic skills, you can screw up your life, but without a knowledge of world history, you can apparently become president and screw up the globe).

I've read a lot of studies of sex ed that say that while it increases knowledge, it doesn't change behavior. The only thing that prevents kids from getting pregnant is putting condoms/pills in their hot little hands. I'm afraid it would prove the same with ec ed. Plenty of people who took Economics in college or went to business school still end up in massive debt, for the same reason that kids still get pregnant: short-term fun > long-term planning.

I don't know what the answer is, but I think it would start with a government and economy that isn't enmeshed with the whole banking/credit card/mortgage industry. (P.S. Joe Biden, I will never forgive you.)

I took economics, business law, and accounting.

I still wound up in debt.

Some times education just makes you want to try game the system. That never works however.

On the upside, I've never gone to a check cashing place, with the advant of totally free checking, I've never understood what you use a check cashing place for.

Won't most employers cash your check for you? Or can't you just go to the bank the check was drawn on, most of my employers have always used a local bank?

Eitherway, I don't think budgeting is an educational issue, i think it's a maturity issue.

When you're young you always think there's a way around debt and that they'll always be money from somewhere, and when you max out your last credit card, you realize it's time to budget.

It's amazing how actually being in debt can teach you so much about money that just learning about debt can't.

The interesting thing about credit cards is that, these days, using them for everything (as long as you pay them off fully every month) is the best strategy, given the 1%-3% cash back programs out there.

Paying with cash, check, or debit cards is foolish, since you're leaving 1 to 3 percent of our total outlay on the table instead of getting it back in your pocket.

It's no surprise the young tykes can't figure out how to avoid the poorhouse. I suppose being reared in a culture of having someone follow behind them and micromanage all of their economic decisions is good place to start. It's not that signing a lease or managing your money is hard. It's that it's a non-slack activity requiring something more than a subsecond attention span.

Everyone out there is happy to extend you credit. The NC State Brickyard is littered with credit card companies literally giving them away every semester. Best Buy is happy to take your money if you have any sort of work history at all. And banks are thrilled to lend you car loan money at 16%. That's the easy part. Putting down the bong and spending a hour to understand what you're in for, apparently is the hard part because, well, someone will come by and clean up your shit, won't they?

I can't tell you how many times I've heard a young person say money is not one of their goals. While they sat in a LaZBoy watching a big flatscreen - but - and here's the funny part - if any of that ever broke, they'd sit there waiting for someone else to replace it.

I actually dropped out of a home economics class in middle school when I found out we were just going to be baking cookies, not learning actual economics. People talk about personal responsibility, I know lots of smart people who got in credit card debt early in life, and other financial problems that could have been avoided. Responsibility is only valuable when combined with knowledge. I probably only avoided it because my parents made a point of teaching me this stuff.

I don't remember what I took instead, but I do kind of wish I'd stuck around and learned more about baking.

to be responsible, but, since we are talking about adolescents, you can teach them the skills they can use once they are ready to be responsbile. I learned as the teacher of a college class just about everybody hated but had to take (composition), that much of the learning in that particular age demographic is latent. I've encountered plenty of former students who were complete screwups in my class who have told me that the things they learned there really came in handy in their upper division work and their careers. This latency phenomenon can be unfortunate in the case of financial training and tragic in the case of sex ed, but, providing their impulses don't lead them into fatal behavior in the meantime (or providing, as you suggest, they have access to contraceptives and prophylactics), once they get a clearer and broader perspective on their own futures they will have the tools they need to ensure their protection and success.

The real problem with Check-Cashing services isn't the cashing service, but the loan services. Yes, almost anybody can set up a bank account and get free checking and check-cashing. While there are some reasons some people may not do that, the essential difference - explaining the existence of the cashing places - is that normal banks won't give you "pay day loans" or advances based on your paycheck. That's where patrons of the usurers get in trouble. They use their paychecks as down money/collateral for loans with outrageous interest rates. So they can buy lottery tickets, Keefs calandars and other merchandise.

The lesson is, don't spend beyond your means.