Why schools will never teach us about money
One of the biggest questions young adults or just adults in general always have is why did school never teach us about money, and the truth is far worse then you would expect. Schools never taught us about taxes, investments, saving accounts or even mortages, which does seem silly because these areas are essentially the pillars of our lifes.
I wonder why they wouldn't want us to know these crucial aspects of life, maybe because governments wouldn't profit if everyone was financially smart. Yes that's correct if everyone actually knew the value of money and how to manage this tool correctly they would receive less tax payments, people wouldn't be so careless on purchases.
Will this ever change?
We now have access to information at the touch of a search bar online. There are hundreds of good sources that explain how to finance safely for free. They can cover mortgages, budgeting, investing quite literally anything you would want to know that schools won't tell you for free.
A few suggestions that I recommend are:
"Wealth consists in not having great possessions but in having few wants" - Epictetus
A great philosopher stated the quote above and I believe this quote has great value beacsue you can take many meanings away from it. When I read it, what I take from it is the more you gain the more you have to lose. This is important to be aware of all throughout life to try make the best possible decisions to maintain what you have and never be overly greedy. That message will have greater meaning when you look more into money and have a fuller understanding of what money actually is.
What areas of money to start with?
Now your probably wondering where to start as there's so many directions you can go with money. Realistically that all depends on your situation, if your struggling with cost of living right now I would suggest you look into budgeting methods. If your looking for homes then you need to understand how mortgages work and the best ways to tackle them. For an ordinary person with not too much money and not too little I would be looking into investing. This could consist of property investments to trading and buying stocks or even crypto. Crypto currently has crashed which sounds bad but in actual fact is good for new investors as they can buy for very cheap prices, but like anything there's a risk element so don't be careless. You should alway research intensely so you know what your getting into.
A great tip that I'll share with you that I learnt is that is when you receive any amount of money you should split it and put the divided amount into two different bank accounts one for living and one for investing. You could go further by setting investment targets, or even splitting it a third time to put that extra part into a savings account. By doing this not only will you have a financial safety net by also a chance to leap forward through smart investments.
Money monitoring
What I mean by this is do you know where your money is actually going. This may seem like an obvious question but many are mistaken on this part of money. Money monitoring is a core element everyone should be doing, you can start by looking at your balance sheet with your bank and total your expenditure for a week, month or even a year. Then you should look into certain sections like food, everyday items or ongoing memberships like Netflix. After you do those steps 9 times out of 10 you will be shocked on how much your over spending on stuff you don't need. After you do this you can then total up the expenditures you over pay for or don't need. Then finally you will see how much money you can save or either invest.
If you use this tip with the last you will certainly be in a much stronger financial position than before, and the great thing is you can always improve on this meaning you can always have extra money that you wouldn't of thought twice about before.
Summary
To summarise, understanding money is hard because we're not taught really anything on it at school, but luckily learning today is so much more accessible through the internet. The way to have a deeper knowledge of money is by reseraching online and the best thing about this it's all free. Furthermore, there are hundreds of teachers to chose from all online and you can really tell which ones know what they're talking about. Through having experience from their own companies and how they invest in certain assets.