Investing

[Tiger337]

8 hours ago, Deleterious said:

This makes me happy.

Michigan is poised to become 14th state to mandate personal finance education

 

I'm sure somebody will complain about this, but this is one mandate where it's really hard to see a downside.  

[Deleterious]

21 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I'm sure somebody will complain about this, but this is one mandate where it's really hard to see a downside.  

A while back I approached multiple school board members in multiple districts about adding this to their curriculum.  None of them would touch it.  You would have thought I was asking them to discuss abortion or gun control.  I was so angry that I spent two months trying to convince my girlfriend to run for a board seat to push this agenda.

Show me the person that opposes this and I will show you someone with a years worth of salary in credit card debt.

[Screwball]

That's amazing.  I can't speak for all school systems except for the one I am familiar with - what a mess.  I would guess they are not the only one.

I teach a college STEM class at a local college, and also at a local vocational school filled with high school kids from 14 surrounding high schools.  There is not much learning going on, and IMNSHO we are turning out a bunch of imbeciles.

Have you had a geometry class?  Yes, of course.  What is a diameter?  The size of a circle.  What is a radius?  Crickets.  Great!

One of the teachers told me he gave them a 15 question test on fractions.  His entire class (17) missed all but 2.

I had some downtime one day so to have a little fun I asked my class how many know how to make change (like from a cash register).  Not a clue.  Which is obvious when you go to a store - if the register didn't tell them the change - they would need a calculator.

So I taught them how to make change.  Wow!  That's pretty cool.  Yep.

But they really exceptional with phones.

And let it be noted; the two years of zoom classes and partial shutdowns did not help with the quality of learning one bit.

[Tiger337]

I am lucky to be in a situation where almost all my students are bright and motivated, but I have encountered unmotivated students at other schools.  In my experience, there are a lot of students who have no business being in college.  They are more disinterested than stupid.  They are wasting their time and money when they they could be learning a trade and making money.   I guess that is where the personal finance class would have been helpful.  

Edited June 9, 2022 by Tiger337

[Screwball]

18 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I am lucky to be in a situation where almost all my students are bright and motivated, but I have encountered unmotivated students at other schools.  In my experience, there are a lot of students who have no business being in college.  They are more disinterested than stupid.  They are wasting their time and money when they they could be learning a trade and making money.   I guess that is where the personal finance class would have been helpful.  

A personal finance class would be good for anyone at any age, adjusted for the level they need addressed.

Like compounding.  Look how much you will gain by saving your money as it compounds over time.  Oh, wait.  Saving's interest rates are what????  Bad example.

Credit interest rates and inflation rates say "hold my beer."

[Deleterious]

1 hour ago, Screwball said:

I had some downtime one day so to have a little fun I asked my class how many know how to make change (like from a cash register).  Not a clue.  Which is obvious when you go to a store - if the register didn't tell them the change - they would need a calculator.

So I taught them how to make change.  Wow!  That's pretty cool.  Yep.

 

Almost ever person we promote to server has to be taught how to make change properly.  It is absolutely mind blowing to me.  I barely graduated high school and I knew how to make change.

[Screwball]

13 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Almost ever person we promote to server has to be taught how to make change properly.  It is absolutely mind blowing to me.  I barely graduated high school and I knew how to make change.

 

In 1973, as a junior in high school, during the oil embargo when we had to ration gasoline (which was a complete zoo, and a bunch of pissed off people), I was armed with one of these puppies along with a wad of bills in my shirt pocket.

Good luck with that today.

I've thought about setting up a stand out in a public place with a cash register change drawer, a laptop, and timer.  Here, make 20 bucks if you can give the right change back in 10 seconds once the random number hits the screen.  Of course take a video of people trying to do this.  I think it would be great comedy.

[Deleterious]

I see that and instantly want to go to one of those old A&W's for a root beer.

[1776]

1 hour ago, Screwball said:

A personal finance class would be good for anyone at any age, adjusted for the level they need addressed.

Absolutely!
I was hanging around a car dealership the other day waiting for my wife’s car to be serviced. I struck up a conversation with a kid there that was a salesperson. After some small talk I blindsided him. I hit him with, “So what are you doing to prepare for retirement?” The kid is 28 years old and makes decent money (he pretty much told me what his salary is) and is single. He’s investing $0 into the 401K offered there. He doesn’t have a Roth IRA either. This is the stuff that really gets away with me. It was a very interesting conversation. It’s like they don’t know where to start. They don’t understand investing. At that age it is as simple as it ever will be in his\her life. 

 

[Tiger337]

I wish I knew about investing earlier than I did.  I was good about saving, but didn't know anything about investing.  Of course. back then if you just put your money in the bank, you could make some money.  

[1776]

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

In my experience, there are a lot of students who have no business being in college.  They are more disinterested than stupid.  They are wasting their time and money when they they could be learning a trade and making money.   I guess that is where the personal finance class would have been helpful.  

Your comment, and affiliation with Brandeis University, begs me to ask, have you ever read any of Thom Sowell’s work? Your above comments could almost have been clipped from his biography, ‘A Personal Odyssey.’

[Jim Cowan]

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

In my experience, there are a lot of students who have no business being in college.  They are more disinterested than stupid.  They are wasting their time and money when they they could be learning a trade and making money.   

My school accommodates these people with a program called "General Business" to accommodate the people who are too stupid or disinterested to qualify for a specialty program like Accounting or Insurance or Marketing.  If you or your parents are not out of money yet you can come back as often as you want.

[Tiger337]

5 minutes ago, 1776 said:

Your comment, and affiliation with Brandeis University, begs me to ask, have you ever read any of Thom Sowell’s work? Your above comments could almost have been clipped from his biography, ‘A Personal Odyssey.’

I have not read Sowell.  

By the way,  college was a great experience for me personally.  I put a lot into and got a lot out of it.  It's not for everybody though and I think too many people are going to four year colleges for no good reason.  They waste they own time and water down the learning of the more serious students.  

[Tiger337]

1 minute ago, Jim Cowan said:

My school accommodates these people with a program called "General Business" to accommodate the people who are too stupid or disinterested to qualify for a specialty program like Accounting or Insurance or Marketing.  If you or your parents are not out of money yet you can come back as often as you want.

UMass Lowell had plenty of majors for less intellectual students.  The problem is I taught FORTRAN programming which some liberal arts majors took as an elective to fulfill their foreign language requirement!

[Jim Cowan]

Just now, Tiger337 said:

UMass Lowell had plenty of majors for less intellectual students.  The problem is I taught FORTRAN programming which some liberal arts majors took as an elective to fulfill their foreign language requirement!

FORTRAN lol, that's the language that we were taught in Computer Science...because COBOL was too new!

[Tiger337]

2 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

FORTRAN lol, that's the language that we were taught in Computer Science...because COBOL was too new!

It is still the best language I have ever used.  

[1776]

2 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I wish I knew about investing earlier than I did.  I was good about saving, but didn't know anything about investing.  Of course. back then if you just put your money in the bank, you could make some money.  

I was very fortunate. I was 28 years old when I got my first really good job, both from a salary perspective as well as doing something I enjoyed. I knew NOTHING about investing, NOTHING. I was fortunate that I worked with a couple of guys that did know something about how important investing for the long term was. That was huge for me. I realize a lot of kids are never fortunate enough to get that message from friends or family. My parents never had any extra money to invest so that wasn’t a conversation when I was younger. 
I worked at the same facility for over 34 years. I totally realize this is unheard of these days. But, I think that was an advantage regarding the investing side of things. I don’t see how younger people accumulate much on these ‘gig’ jobs nowadays. Yes, I am a Boomer, so bear with me.
 

[gehringer_2]

12 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

It is still the best language I have ever used.  

GOTO with you and your FORTRAN!

 

[gehringer_2]

28 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

FORTRAN lol, that's the language that we were taught in Computer Science...because COBOL was too new!

We did FORTRAN because it was 'engineering.' COBOL was for the busAd students who couldn't have gotten in the Engin school.....

To me the funny story in engineering programming education was that after K&R released 'C' it gained wide adoption pretty quickly because it was so fast and powerful, but CS Academics hated it because it was unreadable, undisciplined and 'dangerous' (all of which are true) so Pascal became the language of choice at many University CS departments because it was more 'sound' from a purist's standpoint. But of course no-one in industry cared a whit about Pascal or ever used it for anything, so eventually university CS depts were pulled kicking and screaming by industry back to 'C'. So now we have 'C++' which combines of worst of all the worlds it tries to encompass. But anyone who wants to get anything done quickly just jumps ship to Python. 👍

Edited June 9, 2022 by gehringer_2

[The Ronz]

Let me know when the dBase III discussion begins. 😁

[Hongbit]

1 hour ago, 1776 said:

Absolutely!
I was hanging around a car dealership the other day waiting for my wife’s car to be serviced. I struck up a conversation with a kid there that was a salesperson. After some small talk I blindsided him. I hit him with, “So what are you doing to prepare for retirement?” The kid is 28 years old and makes decent money (he pretty much told me what his salary is) and is single. He’s investing $0 into the 401K offered there. He doesn’t have a Roth IRA either. This is the stuff that really gets away with me. It was a very interesting conversation. It’s like they don’t know where to start. They don’t understand investing. At that age it is as simple as it ever will be in his\her life. 

 

It’s probably good that you didn’t ask how much crypto he owns.    

[Screwball]

Speaking of programming languages; anyone ever use or are familiar with "Forth?"  Truly ugly stuff.

[gehringer_2]

Just now, Screwball said:

Speaking of programming languages; anyone ever use or are familiar with "Forth?"  Truly ugly stuff.

LOL - yes! I had a Forth interpreter on my PC years ago. The connection for me was that I had H-P programmable calculators and programming those was structurally just like FORTH, all stack operations. So I played with FORTH a bit. Never did any serious work with it though. I read somewhere that early Space Shuttle computers used FORTH because it was so compact, but I've also seen that contradicted.

[Edman85]

5 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I'm sure somebody will complain about this, but this is one mandate where it's really hard to see a downside.  

Possible ones I foresee:

Bad habits being taught... or antiquated habits. DeSantis talked about balancing a checkbook, does anybody do that anymore?

Red states having people pay off education boards to steer people toward their products.

[1984Echoes]

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

UMass Lowell had plenty of majors for less intellectual students.  The problem is I taught FORTRAN programming which some liberal arts majors took as an elective to fulfill their foreign language requirement!

Ever been at the UMass-Amherst location?

My best buddy has a PHD in Accounting and teaches at Amherst. Actually, I think he does more research and papers than teaching but... He got his PHD at Amherst and then started teaching at Drexel in Philly. Moved back to teaching at Amherst a dozen years ago or so...