The Importance Of Personal Finance Education

A major way to improve personal finance education in the United States is motivating students by showing them that this content will help them in their lives, with emphasis on the need for it in the real world. After all, “since financial education is not a requirement…it is important to provide other sources of financial information…which might stimulate the teen’s interest” (Varcoe et al. 70). Personal finance classes are not made a requirement in many states, however, those that do have these classes have seen positive results from increased student motivation. For example, after the 2008 financial crisis in the United States, “15% [of personal finance classes] indicated that enrollment had increased since the start of the recession” (Hite

High school students are more likely to be concerned with certain financial situations such as choosing to attend university. For example, “students bound for a four-year college, a professional job, or a higher starting salary consistently outscore students who are less highly motivated” (Mandell and Klein 106). Those students with plans to attend a four-year college had an average score of 54.9% on the personal finance test, whereas those who had no further plans only had an average of 37.9% on the same test (111). The motivation for these students to perform well in personal finance class comes from their “expectations and goal setting” (106). Therefore, while college bound students have these goals naturally, those students who are going directly into the work force should be encouraged to see the benefits of personal finance for themselves. For students who do wish to attend university, the need to understand college finances also extends to debt because “most college students borrow to finance their education, yet often do so without fully understanding how much debt is appropriate for their education” (Pelletier 1). From these results, it is clearly very important that students are motivated to learn about their personal finance, “stressing the importance of the subject matter to the students’ own lives” (Mandell 275). Therefore, by increasing student motivation, the results of personal finance classes will be more effective and help students understand the material even after high