How personal finance is taught in secondary school ? Early ...

In my microeconomics class, our teacher brought in a guess speaker for a one hour personal finance crash course. He began talking to us about budgeting, and he asked how we felt about it. The general consensus was that a budget was ?lame,? ?restrictive,? or ?pointless.? He then told us to imagine that we were 21, and we needed to make a budget. The class came to a general consensus that this would be a ?frugal? starter budget:

Rent $700
Partying $400
Food $300
Car Loan $200
Incidental $200
Utilities $175
Car insurance $150
Gas $120
Cell Phone $50
Internet $40
Cable $35
Total $2370

Yes, people really thought that spending $400 on bar hopping was frugal. The speaker made a few comments on the budget, and said that unless we wanted to live in a trailer park, we would have to spend $800 on rent. Apparently having a roommate is not a viable option. He also insisted that a car, cell phone, and cable were basic human needs in the 21st century. Apparently cable is a human need, while health insurance is not. Many people in my class commented that this budget seemed really small, and he assured them that once they made more money, they could get a better car and a mortgage, they just needed to make a few ?sacrifices? in the beginning.

Then he talked to us about 401k and IRA. He said that if we just put 10% of our net pay in a 401k or IRA at 5% interest, we would have $1,000,000 by the time we want to retire at 60. Isn't that the same advice given to people that still can't retire at 60. Everyone in the class made wooing sounds.

I said that his model ignores inflation, taxes, and banking fees. He looked at me, laughed, and went on talking about the services that the bank he works for offers. He urged us all to open a saving account with .01% interest and several monthly fees.

I felt a bit angry that the speaker made it seem that retirement can only happen after 40 years of labor, and the fact that the lesson was just a sales pitch to open up a bank account.

Is this how the ERE community remembers their personal finance education, or did your education not involve personal finance?

Source: http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/topic.php?id=2994

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