The Problem

 

What is the issue:

School systems should teach students like me so that we can survive what’s ahead. There are simple things that we can add to the classroom curriculum that will better prepare the future of tomorrow in the areas of economics and basic financial management. Why do you need to know how long it takes a train from point A to go to point B what nobody really cares when you don’t even know how to do your own taxes or how credits work. 54% of Americans (2,160,000 people) do not know how to do their taxes and spend between $152 - $261 every year for a tax preparer to fill out the standard 1040 form. The youngest generation, the Millennials have the worst Credits Score ever. A Trend shows that Millenials and Gen Z ‘s take more student loans and care loans than everyone else and their average debt in their young age is already $37,765. When a young person is 17 or 18 years old, they are about to go out on their own, it might be a good idea to help them begin to establish a credit history. Establishing it early will help ensure that they'll be able to get the apartment they need, they'll be able to buy that car to get to and from work, all of those things that a credit report will be helpful for. There are almost no High Schools who offer this mandatory type of class. Most of the students start working at the age of 16 and buy cars and guess what? They pay taxes and take debits. The government (locally & federal) should be interested in teaching students important basic life skills, to reduce the statistic of the amount of people who don’t know how to do their taxes (54%) or how credits work.

 

 

Disagreements in the community:

People might say that we already have almost no funding for public schools. I say that your number one priority in school should be classes who teach us life skills. School is there to prepare and teach us skills for our future life. Why should we save our money for equipment in school when they don’t even fulfill their number one task.

 

Schools how have similar classes:

Osborne High school in Georgia has a club since 2011 and they learn basic financial management. Their final exam in order to complete the club is, to find a person who earns less than $45,000 a year to do their tax proposal for FREE. They also learn to grow and give something back to their community. This school made over 1,300 tax proposal and yielded over $800.000 in refunds. Additionally their customers saved about $260,000 because they saved money not paying a tax preparer ( charges about $152-$261)

 

Possible Solutions:

Our thoughts were that we need to make an own class for Basic Financial Management with is mandatory to take in order to graduate. In this class teachers will teach students about how to do their taxes, getting loans and how they work, how to invest your money and money management in general. In order to complete this class they have to find people in their community who earn less than $45.000 a year to do their tax preparation.