How much financial education did you get growing up? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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How much financial education did you get growing up?

1593 sats \ 40 comments \ @stack_harder 18 Sep bitcoin

For me, bitcoin and the rabbit hole it sent me down, was the first time i had really started contemplating finances and, really, what money is and how it works.

and to me, that seems a little bit fucked up, i mean, why wasn't this taught in school. I'm almost 40 and through high school, we never had any class on anything finance-related or the history of money. Nothing on interest, investments, capital devaluation etc.

now you could make the slightly conspiratorial argument that governments like it that way, just tell you that the central bank is great and teach the usual Kensyian 2% crap. but i didn't even get that.

at a minimum, they could teach a syllabus on the history of money, all the things that have been used as currency, from shells to rocks, to gold and how the bank runs led to the creation of central banks. if nothing else, it's interesting and helps understand the context of the current system.

bitcoin aside, why not teach kids about investing, risks, and asset classes, let them create dummy portfolios and track things, get hands on.

now, for context, i grew up in the Uk and the idea of currency debasement was not something people were aware of or really felt that much so there is some first-world privilege, but i still believe that schools aren't doing anything to prepare kids some seriously turbulent economic times.

literally nobody i know from my old school (normal lower to middle-class demographic) has any idea about investing or anything and nobody ever talked about it. even my parents just bought some premium bonds and my dad had some shares in some oil companies.

the funny thing is, i had a rich grandad who was into investing and property, but he never discussed it (also never helped anyone and was a textbook penny pincher and not a great person).

i have young kids now and as i have mentioned in other posts, i have already started teaching my 9-year-old about btc and pay her pocket money in sats and have explained inflation using a water being added to soup analogy. How can people just not teach kids things which play such an important role in life.

So yeah, that was my financial education, or lack off.

maybe people in the US or other countries had a different experience? what about you guys? or does a lot of it just come down to having a good person/mentor to give you solid advice in your formative years?

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40 sats \ 3 replies \ @IamSINGLE 18 Sep

Are you writing this up as a follow up to @hasherstacker's post #689349 today. The views in both the posts are quite similar.

11 sats \ 2 replies \ @stack_harder OP 18 Sep

i didn't see that post actually, i was more interested in seeing how much general financial education people got when they were growing up Vs my lack of it , like maybe i am the exception?

it crosses the topic of teaching kids finance in general (not limited to btc) because i feel bitter in many ways that i was never taught such basic things and , quite frankly, it's outrageous given the amount of crap schools do teach

162 sats \ 1 reply \ @IamSINGLE 18 Sep

There is similarity but yours is also a very good write. I like it and I also zapped it. We definitely need to ask and programme school education with Bitcoin. Now is no time to teach finance, it's time when kids must be taught about freedom and that too very early in their lives. My father has been an accountant throughout his life and finance is almost in my genes, you can say. Still, my father didn't know about Bitcoin before me. I'm the one who told him about Bitcoin.

So, the point is this, the schools are such a bad bad system for education, I don't have any hope from these commercial buildings. Instead I would like to see parents take initiative to teach their kids about freedom and Bitcoin from very early age.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 18 Sep

often the old legacy guys didnt pay attention to bitcoin because they 'already made it' and this new thing comes along and becomes a beast, so i get the blindspot, although some people, like Buffet, will never come around

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Golu 19 Sep

Nothing from schools. We don't get any in india from schools. However I got about logistics in inheritance from my family.

72 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 18 Sep

I had very little formal economic education as a kid, but my father really was a master teacher. He instinctively knew all this stuff we talk about without knowing what it was called. He had absolutely no trust and faith in the government. His parents grew up poor in southern Italy. They traded that life for poverty in the U. S. during the depression. My father somehow knew all about debt based fiat instinctively. While my other friend's parents fought to remain debt free, he borrowed money to acquire hard assets. Then he watched the government inflate those assets over the years. He wouldn't use a personal checkbook. Everything was cash. I was the only kid I knew who paid for a private Catholic education in cash.

I don't think you can ever trust the government to educate your kids in this area.

43 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 18 Sep

im already raising my daughter to think for herself and make her own opportunities and not see the tradition 'school path' as anything other than something that maybe used to work. question the shit out of authority.

the story about your dad reminds me of a hilarious bit by the Italian American comedian Sebastian Maniscalco called 'my dad loves cash'

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 18 Sep

It is funny, but that was my reality! You would never think to insult a bride and groom at their wedding with any gift other than cash. I still feel that way. Now I give bitcoin for Christmas gifts if my nieces and nephews appreciate it. Three or four do now.

11 sats \ 2 replies \ @random_ 18 Sep

My older brother told me the difference between keynesian and austrian economics when I was still in elementary school. But, I did not find out why one cannot save in fiat until many years later.

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 18 Sep

yeah, rarely do you hear people say 'oh btw don't save in fiat because it dilutes, store your finances in x instead'

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @random_ 18 Sep

something felt over time, hard to pin down

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @SpaceHodler 18 Sep

Growing up I didn't get any formal financial education, but some of the things I learned from my parents:

The central bank prints money and causes inflation. (My early teens saw hyperinflation - it was the transformation from communism to a more market economy)
Don't live above your means

42 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Sep

I was born in 1971, yeah the fatidic year when the dollar was de-pegged from gold. My first 20 years of life I lived in pure communist regime. Almost everything was scarce, even the bread.

My family wasn't really poor, just a normal middle class earning, workers.

What did they said to me, especially my grandpa, was to save money anytime I can. And spend them wisely only on things that I really need. Think twice when is about to buy something, no matter how much desire I have for that thing. And also they always said: never trust the gov and the banks.

Maybe that's why I appreciate and understand so much Bitcoin. Because is damn scarce.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 18 Sep

i think spending wisely is good advice and so is never trusting the banks, especially now.

in the West, we never experienced those things in recent times you you just grow up on blind trust.

i spent over a decade in russia from the mid 00s and heard a ton of stories from people that got wiped out in the 90s, 98 default and more. that stuff causes generational trauma.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @drlh 18 Sep

I've heard them too. My poor grandpa's savings overnight dissapeared as a currency (soviet ruble) in a inexistent institution (he stored them in post...). Then there was MMM, 2 months obligations in russia, and other scam shit. In moldova a billion buccs swinged away from 4 banks 10 years ago. Also some insane amount of monis, like half trillion of rubles got washed from russia into other states.

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @nullama 18 Sep

I don't think there's anything like that in schools.

Definitely I didn't get any information about how investments work, etc.

Looking at my friends from school it is so obvious what happened:

The kids with fathers that own their business, ended up rich while managing the business.
All the other kids ended up working for someone else, and they're all relatively OK but clearly struggling, as in, they have to continue working or they run out of money.

That's basically what happens. Rich families pass this information to their kids, and working class families teach their kids that they should work hard.

It's basically the main premise of the 1997 book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, from Robert Kiyosaki.

It makes sense really, because you need way more workers than entrepreneurs/business owners.

But I think with AI we will start to see more 1 man companies since you can use AI as your tech employees, but that's a topic for another time.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 18 Sep

i saw a bit of this, alhtough nobody really owned a business from my school set, apart from one kid who was set up for life right away.

richest guy from my year is a self-employed hairdresser lol, no wife and didn't even accept card payments until covid forced him to, he had a porchse when he was like 22 (not the best model, but still) while all out other friends were saddled with massive student loans and very, very average jobs

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 18 Sep

But I think with AI we will start to see more 1 man companies since you can use AI as your tech employees

LOL the so called "AI" will dumb down even more the young generations.

32 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 18 Sep

My mum took me to open a structured deposit when I was 17. She distinctly told me that money will only multiply when we put it to work.

She would have loved the idea of Bitcoin!

32 sats \ 0 replies \ @LowK3y19 18 Sep

I didn’t get any financial help growing up as a kid I had to figure out most of this stuff on my own

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @orangecheckemail_isthereany 19 Sep

Nothing about investing, protecting your purchasing power, money creation and inflation etc during any schooling I've been exposed to. My real education on that front started around 2012 when I watched the zeitgeist film or films. Before that time I don't think I ever seriously thought about the money we use, how it gets created, whether anybody controls it, the architecture of the system, other ways to do it etc. I think there's some serious flaws, misconceptions and misguided or erroneuous lines of argument in that film series but I think it played an important role in getting the ball rolling or setting people down some fruitful rabbit holes. It would be quite a few years later before I delved into the so-called austrian-school perspectives on this. Mises "Economic Calculation int he Socialist Commonwealth" helped me quite a bit in understanding prices, processes of price formation and the relation to free markets and the notion of economic calculation. I often recommend that piece together with Mises' "Bureaucracy" and Bastiat's "The Law".

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Thereal 19 Sep

After reviewing my bio, I could tell you that I knew nothing until I studied bitcoin.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DesertDave 19 Sep

I learned that if you took a dollar food stamp to circle k and purchased a 3 cent bazooka gum, you could get 97 cents in usd change back. Do it at a few different stores and then your dad can get a pack of cigarettes. Life hack. Don't think it works like that anymore.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @trieska 18 Sep

I have very similar feeling and experiences. I am from Slovakia and we are post communistic country, well it was change 30 years ago but some poeple has still socialistic mindset.

yes, time to time I am discussing money and bitcoin with children ;-)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 19 Sep

do you still have the thign with the older generation where they prefer the good old days because there were , for example, stable factory jobs?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitcoiner1 18 Sep

Not much financial education from parents or teachers.

In my case, I learned because I grow up in a hiper inflation country and my parents were not the most smart people with money.

My dad has a very short term mentality, why save money 💰, it's better to spend it today...the items will be more expensive tomorrow...but never invest.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Msd0457890 18 Sep

Legally I never received a financial education, nobody taught you what money is, what saving is, and my parents only taught me how to earn money, spend it, they only told me to study and work to have a better future but nothing about what fiduciary money is, nothing about knowing if inflation exists. I began to wake up to the fallacy of fiduciary money when I realized that the money I earned was water and salt because my country Venezuela fell into a crisis (in which it is still) sunk in a terrible economic model which has destroyed its entire economy.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @drlh 18 Sep

In our school a bank assistant explained why banks gives you interest when you deposit and hold money in the bank: they use your monis for investment, more precisely as a someone else's credit. Nobody raised an eyebrow. But hey free 2.5 buccs for opening an account with a voucher!

Also he gave some fuzzy example in ancient time, when monis were stored in temples people payed for the protection. But people didn't like to pay, and safeguards didn't like that monis were staying without a purpose. So in exchange for some interest, safeguards could invest a fraction of monis into something else while they're in account. Did fractional reserve exist in ancient time? Could someone explain please?

That's all my school's financial education, besides some math problems.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 19 Sep

of course now, when you get a loan in the bank, they literally create the money out of thin air for that loan, it's not even coming from deposits. would be funny to see someone explain fractional reserves to a bunch of ten year olds tho

fractional reserves happened in the past though, it was just called the bank lying about how many deposits it had on hand

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @DesertDave 18 Sep

None. We were super broke. We lived disability check to disability check. Often with the electricity and/or water turned off. It was interesting. My father was a passionate artist with no sense. No stability in that way.

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 19 Sep

i suppose that is kind of a counter lesson. like my dad always abused his health and it made me somewhat of a fitness and health nut as a result because i didn't want to end up like that

32 sats \ 0 replies \ @DesertDave 19 Sep

For sure. My dad was really good at helping me see what not to do. I was an observant kid so it worked out great. I appreciate my strange childhood. Everyone's path is strange in it's own way. I'm very grateful for my lessons.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount 18 Sep

Education is obsolete in the information age. There is only learning and indoctrination now.

State schools in US are funded by property tax. Even if you have no kids, or your kids go to a private school, or your kids go to a state-school in another district, you still have to give your property tax dollars to the state school in your property's district.

Imagine if educators on YouTube got paid regardless if their videos got 10 views or 10M views. What would the quality of content on YouTube trend towards? Now imagine that YouTube was operated by the same institution that controls the money in society. There would probably be a lot of propaganda videos and not many videos which teach alternative money systems.

There's almost no learning to be had in state-run education centers, its 80% indoctrination.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 19 Sep

this is 100% true, then again i wonder, was it always true? has it really changed and honestly i think not.

i see why homeschooling is so popular now, i just see school as a place for my kids to make some friends. while all the other parents are worried about the average exam grades, my approach is ' as long as there a nice teachers and good friends, i can do my bit with the brain programming and teaching the kids to actually think critically'

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @jerrybature 18 Sep

I am 35 years old. I didn't get any serious financial education growing up, until 2017 when I got hit so hard by price inflation. That was when I started educating myself on finance and money, and bitcoin came along.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 18 Sep

inflation has been so shit since covid i think it's the driving factor for a lot of people now trying to find out what the hell happened