Personal Finance for Students? Teachers Could Use It, Too — from edweek.org by Elizabeth Heubeck

More states are mandating personal finance courses for high schoolers, but what if their teachers aren’t confident managing money themselves?
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But as momentum grows around students’ financial education, a key issue is often overlooked: Many teachers don’t feel confident in their own financial knowledge.

It’s not a problem unique to teachers. Experts report that many U.S. adults lack financial literacy, which, until very recently, was rarely required as a high school graduation requirement. Few teachers study it in college, despite recent surveys of K-12 educators indicating a strong interest in the subject. And once in the classroom, teachers rarely take time to learn subjects that would benefit their own lives, like personal finance, says Yanely Espinal, a financial educator and former classroom teacher.

It’s very rare that you see a teacher pause and consider their own needs, asking themselves things like, ‘How can I set myself up financially? Am I on track?,’”

From DSC:
If you are working in K-12 or in higher education, don’t rely on the contributions that your organization makes to your 403(b) or your 401k plans (the type of plan depends upon your organization’s for-profit or non-profit/tax-exempt status). You should be investing wisely. Those 6-10% contributions won’t cut it these days, even after working 30+ years at a place that contributes that kind of funds to your retirement accounts. You need to invest aggressively if you are going to retire at age 65 (or even younger).

I worked in the corporate world for half of my career and I’m glad that I did. It helped me understand more about personal finance and investing. It helped me get started building a nest egg. But it was really aggressive investments in a couple of key companies that helped me the most. I’m not here to specify which companies to invest in. I’m just saying that if you are relying on 6%-10% contributions to meet your retirement-related needs, you may end up with far less than you’ll need to retire.

I’m glad that they are teaching personal finance these days in K-12. I hope they add some basic legal knowledge to the curricula as well.