Im from Poland and I didnt know that things like index funds, ETFs, bonds exist untill I was almost 30. Basically the only way I have seen people investing is buying houses, and that was not very common too. Now since I started reading investment subreddits I have realized that majority of people there are in very early 20s or even 18. Do they teach you about these things in school?
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I didn’t
Not normally, no.
I learned on my own in high school.
I did, but I don’t think it’s common.
I believe my high school had an elective Finance class that would have taught a little about it.
Things like compound interest? Yes. Generally touched on in a statistics unit in algebra or precalc, but not in depth or to a point where ignoring it will fail the student.
Things like ETFs, bonds, things like that? I don’t think so, unless you take an Econ class as an elective in high school
I wish. We had a brief unit on the stock market in one class, but I don’t recall it going into anything that than the basics of “buy low, sell high”.
No.
I’m sure there are classes you can take in college, or sign up for a financial course outside of school.
But it is not some type of standard curriculum.
Generally no.
As someone who works in the industry I don’t think there’s any reason they should either.
Not typically, no.
In high school we had Accounting I & II electives, and they did teach a lot of practical stuff with taxes, credit, mortgages & investing. The Accounting elective wasn’t something that a lot of people signed up for, and at 15/16 I didn’t really appreciate what I was learning.
I do remember some of what I learned. Others I’m still in touch with from HS don’t remember that the courses were even offered.
I didn’t
Once a year in high school they’d have people come to assemblies to talk to us. Usually there was a guy from Edward Jones who would try to explain that if we started saving now we’d be milionaires by the time we retired at 65. Thats about it.
We did, in my state-mandated econ class
My school had a one semester class about economics but it only really covered the very basics. Supply vs demand, how the stock market works, that sort of thing. We had a project where we pretended to invest in a company and tracked how it did over the semester.
So I learned some things. It’s a decent base to build on if you choose to learn more on your own though.
I took an elective financial class that discussed how to balance a checking account, budgeting, and gave a high-level overview on investment and taxes, among other things.
The class is now mandatory to all High-school students in the state; though some people got upset because it replaced a science class.
Not generally, though there are optional (though often paid) financial literacy courses available basically everywhere that are targeted at teens and young adults and some schools do provide such courses.
I tend to think this is a failing in our education system and there should be a semester on assorted personal finances topics as part of every high school curriculum.
In our economics class my 9th grade year, the class was “given” $1000 and we had a week to research companies and at the end of the week, we all had to buy stock with our $1000. 4 weeks later, the winner got a candy bar.
It didn’t go into any real depth about understanding all the metrics and pretty much all of the kids just selected a company they thought was cool, but we were made aware of it.
We are born understanding capitalism.
In high school we were forced to do the Dave Ramsey course as part of a “life skills” class. My university required a “Personal Finances” class for everyone. It covered investing (including retirement and regular brokerage), the process of buying a house (mortgage types and shopping for mortgage rates), car buying, the perils of credit card debt, the importance of emergency funds, when to prioritize paying off debt vs investing. It was honestly like the personal finance sub stretched out over a semester.
I definitely did not although I believe some schools have classes that talk about budgeting for household purchases.
There are books sold about investing and television programs and websites.
We had nothing of the sort when I was in school. I think there was a semester early in high school where some very basic “life skills” were integrated into lessons in my computer class, but not investing. Apparently Louisiana will soon require financial literacy classes in high schools, so we’ll see what that entails.
My HS required me to take an Economics course. It touched a little bit on finance…I think we did a project where we were given fake $$$ to invest at the start of the course and tracked our stocks to see how much we made at the end of the course. In retrospect, that’s a terrible way to teach investing to kids because it basically turns it into gambling.
Otherwise, my investment knowledge either came from courses in college or other resources. My parents also talked a little bit about investing, so I absorbed some basic skills like saving money and setting part of your paycheck aside to invest.
Nope.
It didn’t happen when I was in school many moons ago and based on my nephew’s classes over the last 4 years, it doesn’t look like it’s part of the curriculum in the district now, either.
I was really first introduced to stocks and the market freshman year of college where a friend of mine told me to make a Robinhood so that he can get a free stock (both of us did) I got this $4 one and I forgot about it until 2 years later when I looked at the app again and saw that it was now $10. After that I got really interested in economics and investing, I even read [A Random Walk Down Wall Street](https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/B07MWDML9V/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?adgrpid=61477602612&hvadid=274756273606&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9004405&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=10214440860621643664&hvtargid=kwd-361324065797&hydadcr=15782_10362706&keywords=a+random+walk+down+wall+street&qid=1687549291&sr=8-4). That book is where most if not all my knowledge on the stock market comes from.
No, not really.
We had a basic introduction to how the stock market works.
We had a basic introduction to compound interest– “5% increase per year adds up to a whole lot over many years”, basically.
We did not really get into personal finance, responsible financial habits, etc.
Only electives, as in classes that the student has to pick on purpose.
As a note on ETFs, they weren’t a thing until 1993 so depending on how old you are, they might not have been invented yet, or maybe very new, so it makes sense that those wouldn’t have been taught in school.
I did. We did a mock stock market in elementary school (I think I was about 9 or 10 at the time) where we could experiment with some investing strategies. Math class also heavily discussed loan and fixed return investment interest rates as a basic kind of algebraic formula for us to learn and it was specifically put into the context of financial management.
This is on top of my parents and grandparents teaching me some things on their own and me starting to invest my own money at the age of 13.
I did but it was because as a kid I had a voice crush on David Brancaccio who did Market Place so I searched it out on my own.
We also had economics and government classes so it came up in classes outside of statistics and other maths.
(I went to a tiny public school and don’t think it would have been common topics in other similar schools in the area.)
Not in normal schools. In highschool we did a stock market game in Economics class, which was more gambling than investing. The teacher may have well just taken us to the roulette table at the casino. From what I remember only a couple people in the class made money.
It wasn’t until business school where I actually learned how to invest money. One of the first lessons in class was “Put your money in an index fund that tracks the S&P 500 and come back in 35 years.” It works and is just a money printer over the long term. The S&P 500 doubles your money about every 8-10 years. You max your 401k and Roth for 35 years and you’ll easily retire a multimillionaire.
I don’t know about others, but at my high school we did not.
You’ll have some schools with financial literacy built into a class… budgeting, compound interest/lending, how taxes work (particular to the U.S.’s quirks), what stocks are, etc. You’ll rarely see any detail on financial instruments beyond what stocks are. Like you’d be unlikely to discuss bonds outside of an Econ course, despite how important they are to how we fund so many long-term business and government activities.
We did in an Econ class. Real basic though. We also had an investing competition where we had 100k in a simulated stock market game. Didn’t learn about options and stuff. Just the basics.
To a decent extent, atleast the basics
Lots of people dont pay attention though
At least in my case, no. I learned about it from my mom and reading books outside of school.
The first book I read that talked about the power of compounding returns was *The Wealthy Barber*. It also helped me understand the true cost of things, like cars for instance. There’s the sticker price, the interest you’ll be paying, car insurance, registration, gas, maintenance, opportunity cost… They are expensive AF.
Usually not, however, whenever you have a question about American schooling keep in mind that there are hundreds of different schooling systems within the United States.
My school had an economics class that touched on investing quite a bit. The class also had guest speakers that were well versed in investing.