Your Child Could Be Heading Toward Financial Failure If…

Guest post by Gregg Murset.

If you haven’t heard the famous stand-up comedy routine of Jeff Foxworthy I would suggest taking a few minutes to pull some one-liners up on the Internet before reading the rest of this piece. Foxworthy has worked extremely hard building a successful career by making jokes about real-life situations, as well as a particular class of people who might be called by some “Rednecks“.

As millions of YouTube videos will verify real-life can be very funny. However, it can also be very hard, especially if you aren’t prepared for it. Recently, numerous studies have come out supporting what many of us already see as parents – kids not prepared to make financial decisions they will be forced to make as adults. Add to this a growing generation of kids with a poor work ethic and growing sense of entitlement, and many believe our economic future is in deep trouble.

Right now in the U.S. kids aren’t learning enough (if anything at all) about basic finance, even though these are skills they would use the rest of their lives. Depending on where your high school kids go to school, they may be required to take a combination of foreign language, high-level math (algebra) and high-level science (anatomy) in order to graduate. Why not finance?

Is learning how to speak French more important than learning about interest rates and credit cards? Is figuring out the value of X more important than knowing how to plan a monthly budget or saving for retirement? Is dissecting a preserved animal as critical as understanding the differences between loans and how inflation affects us all?

April is National Financial Literacy Month in the U.S. providing a great opportunity for all of us to evaluate if our children are learning the basic financial information that will help them save, share, budget and make smart money decisions as adults. According to a 2013 report by The Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College on the financial education in each state, only 20 states received a grade of A or B. A debate is now being held in almost all states over whether or not a standalone finance course and a test should be required for high school graduation. I’m not sure why it’s even debatable. Personal finance knowledge will be used more any other knowledge set throughout a person’s lifetime. It’s a no-brainer!

So what if you have a child between the ages of 5 and 17 and you are concerned with what he or she knows about earning, saving, sharing, spending and budgeting money? Is there a way for a parent to tell if there is trouble ahead? Just watch out for these signs that your child could be heading toward financial failure and take corrective action at the first sign of trouble.