credit report
In high school, at least at the high school that I attended, we we're required to take a class in economics. We learned about credit and debt and credit repair after you (like a lot of Americans) end up in debt. Then in college, again most people take one, two or even three economics courses before leaving that particular college or university. Again you learn about everything from taxes to a credit report to buying milk at the store. It amazes me that so many people end up in debt after so much information about the subject is given to them.
A lot of my friends from high school and from around where I live seem to be pretty educated and have a head start on building good credit. We know that its important to establish credit so not having a bill in your name or a credit card that you pay off in a timely fashion doesn't help you, it hurts you. When I am away at school I always meet two kinds of people. Either they don't have any credit established (thinking that's a good thing) or they have so many credit cards that they can't shut their wallet. It amazes me to see this. It makes me think back to those classes I took in economics and pick out the people that slept through it most of the time. It just doesn't make sense to me. We are taught about finances and so on in high school and college like we were taught the alphabet in grade school, and I don't see very many people forgetting where the letter P comes in that line up. So why are people completely disregarding information that was put there to help them build a future?
I know that there are cases where families need credit in order to survive. Like groceries or other necessities. But there are other people who just spend money because they have a credit card to do it on. If they didn't have the card, they wouldn't be buying those extra tops at the mall or other frivolous things. And then they don't take advantage of the tools that are right in front of them, like free credit reports. These are there to help people and instead these people are hurting themselves.
So why are we wasting our time and money on classes to inform people when they are just disregarding all the information that is being given to them? Should we continue to waste these resources?