Do we not do this anymore? When I was in high school almost 40 years ago, there was a class/classes that taught things like balancing a checkbook (go ask your parents), keeping a household budget, how interest works, and the like. I didn't take that class (kinda wished I had), so I don't know what it was called.

If we don't, we should. Especially now that we're all responsible for our own retirement. With nearly every job I've held in the last 20 years, I've been one of the "financial geeks" to ask questions of, and it is astounding the amount of ignorance we collectively have and yet are supposed to understand the shit that gets thrown at us by our 401K plans. I don't blame the individuals for their ignorance, hell, I make a hobby of this stuff and I'm still lost sometimes. But don't just thrown 'em into the deep end, have a class or two in high school because everyone is going to have to deal with some aspect of finances.

My understanding is that no, such classes are uncommon in American high schools these days. I went to a public magnet high school in the 2000s and I can't recall any such class being offered.

As for most financial topics, I don't have much of a mind for it, so I would greatly benefit from a teacher. I need to be taught it, it's very difficult for me to teach myself finance. So I've simply erred on the side of heavily saving so at the very least I have a year or two of buffer.

Theres literally no education about personal finance in high school. And I went to a fancy high school, graduated in 2018. College too. The only thing I've seen is the Wells Fargo booth at the yearly club fair trying to sign up new students for credit cards.

And we wonder why so many americans live in poverty. Yeah the system is far from perfect, but I think basic classes in high school would be a great start to the problem, and could change the issue of generational poverty.

I was required to take a class like in high school 10 years ago and it was called consumer economics where we practiced balancing our checkbook (ironically since i've never even written a check), learned about 401ks, taxes and other stuff. This was in a Chicago suburb for those wondering.

Hardly anyone learns finance in public schools today (not even in my time); its better to keep people ignorant than to teach them how taxes and interest and banking work so you can easily fool them into believing what you want them to believe and make do what you want them to do. Teaching financial literacy should start early and never let up.