In most states around the country, students are required to spend 900 hours in school each year. Given that most students enter the public school system around five-years-old and leave when they are usually eighteen, according to Reference.com, this means that the average individual is spending fifteen percent of their life in school. And that’s not factoring in continuing education or preschool. Despite this staggering statistic, very few students graduating with a degree have even a basic understanding of personal finance and economics. Many experts agree that our school system is more than slightly outdated in this respect and that some of life’s most valuable skills are being ignored in favor of material that is largely irrelevant to most people. Couple this with the fact that personal finance is extremely important, especially for recent graduates, and there is a significant portion of the population that is losing money and making poor financial decisions.
Financial expert and economics blogger Rick Kelo (on YouTube and other social media outlets) is one of the rare individuals who is stepping in and educating people on topics about finances. He has personal website (rickkelo.org), that explains many important topics about our economy including, “The Minimum Wage Issue”, “What is the Optimal Progressive Tax?”, “Answering for the 2008 Global Economic Crash”, and “Free Market Capitalism and the Drive Towards Progress”. As a source of information on the current state of the economy, blogs like this are a means for young people to learn more about the world around them and engage with relevant and modern economic issues through easy to read, yet informative articles.
There are also a number of books out there that are crucial for young people trying to get a grip on their personal finances. In an article published by Business Insider, they listed 11 Personal Finance Books Everyone Should Read Before Turning 30. These books include “The Millionaire Next Door” by Thomas J. Stanley and William Danko. This book is based on more than 20 years of research into seven key characteristics that explain how America’s millionaires got rich. There is also “Think Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, a book directed at younger readers that explains how personal finance is nothing but a serious of decisions and describes what drives people to make the decisions that they make.
For more information about Rick Kelo, or other reading material about personal finance, visit his blog or a number of other websites that contain his articles.