Why isn’t there a required class in high school called Life S%*T 101?  I am only a decade past my highschool graduation but I can safely declare 90% of the math I learned in highschool will never be used by me again.  I can guarantee that most of it I could not do again, even if there was a gun to my head (well, probably especially with a gun to my head. I’m not good under pressure).  And I liked math and got good grades in it! There is a small section of careers where you will need to be able to do more than relatively basic math.  I have never had to calculate the area of a triangle.  Or figure out tan…..I don’t even remember what tan is other than a button on my calculator.  The same goes for the sciences.  I knew I would never go into a career that needed in-depth science knowledge and yet I had to take three years of it.  And hey, Mrs. Allison and every other math teacher out there…remember how you used to say we needed to learn how to do the math ourselves because “it’s not like you will always have a calculator on you”? NEWSFLASH – YES I DO! And so does almost every single person in our society.

My long and drawn out point is that we are forced to take a ton of required courses that have no real world value unless I’m going to be an engineer for example.  Yet we ALL have to learn how to manage our finances, budget, learn about credit ratings and mortgages, how to build your credit and what destroys your credit.  Heck, I didn’t even have a clue in hell how to pay a bill when I first moved out.  Thankfully online banking was becoming mainstream around that time, but other than that, I didn’t have a clue.

No one taught me how to budget or the need for budgets.  No one gave me tips on how to build my credit or that using any more than 30% of my credit limit would actually damage it – I didn’t learn that until I was 30 and in financial counseling.  No one taught me how to apply for a mortgage.  No one taught me how to save.  No one took the time to explain that letting your credit go to absolute garbage by the time you’re 21 will really screw up your life plans.  No one told me how easy it was to mess up your credit score.

All of these things are important life skills that we are never required to be taught.  Life skills that can drastically impact your future.  Yet the school system still thinks it is more important for me to be able to calculate the radius of pi to the power of 7 when the value of x equals z squared.