Many Americans’ bank accounts are on life support.
Some 40 percent of consumers were living paycheck-to-paycheck out of necessity in December 2025, according to a recent survey of 2,465 people from financial data and news site PYMNTS. The sheer number of those waiting on their next paycheck to cover expenses signals a troublesome financial reality for many.
Living paycheck to paycheck – using most of a paycheck for necessities with little or no money left over for savings – became more prevalent as the year went on, PYMNTS found. Some 29 percent of consumers entered 2025 barely surviving on their paychecks, and that number jumped 16 percentage points by December.
As I’ve commented on here before, I think that personal finance should be part of K-12 core curriculum.
The entire extent of what my K-12 education covered was how to write a check and how to balance a checkbook in 5th grade. And, in an optional driver’s ed class, we had to get sample insurance quotes from multiple insurers to drive home the fact that you should get multiple quotes. That’s all I got in 13 years of formal education.
My home economics class in maybe…7th grade?..didn’t touch personal finance at all. Basic cooking skills, clothing repair, some arts and crafts.
Personal finance is something that basically everyone needs to know, and as things stand, basically they only get from their parents and that’s gonna depend on what their parents know.
In the US, curriculum is determined at state or below. It looks like California revised its curriculum to include a high school personal finance class as of 2024, and students will start taking it as of 2027.
https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/personalfinance.asp
I think that that’s probably a good move.
It’s almost like there are those who benefit from large numbers of people being poor and in a constant state of financial crisis, and those people have some sway over public curriculum.
I agree. Everything I’ve learned about personal finances has come from podcasts - not school. I started when I was around 27, and I’m now by far the wealthiest in my friend group despite all of them being higher educated than me.
As thankful as I am for having learned this stuff later rather than never, I’d be so much better off if I’d known it when I was 18. When it comes to investing, missing a decade is a massive nerf. I’d be on my way to being a millionaire by the time I retire.
I don’t see a reason not to teach more about personal finance. How interest works. Consequences for missing payments. I knew a guy that when he was 18 just maxed out several credit cards to buy fun stuff. He got out of that hole eventually, but it was a rough couple years.
I think there’s an underlying problem that I don’t know if you can just teach people, but I think people need to be better at delayed gratification and thinking about consequences. Like that old friend of mine, even if he knew that the credit card debt was going to be more expensive long term, he wanted the tv and stereo now. I don’t know if you can teach that.
And, even if you could, it’s fucked up that people who are poor through little fault of their own are told to just live with less, while people born into wealth can squander it.
So, at the end of this tangent, we should have mechanisms so the floor is high enough people can still have a decent life, and the ceiling is low enough that no one has four mansions.
It’s by design. The financially illiterate produce more profit.
We need critical thinking courses as well