Financial Fitness

South Carolina is proposing that all public school students take a fitness course in personal finance. A great idea! Since public schools are teaching so little these days and the colleges have become training schools, it seems a natural that the public school should teach at least one practical skill – beyond reading poorly, writing poorly, and with little ability at math. At least, our youngsters will begin to understand finance charges, interest rates, and payment costs.

Personally, in high school, I took a business math course, and it was among those courses I still remember many years later. It took me years to educate my college educated daughter about the huge cost difference of just one-half a percentage point meant on a house loan. Kids are not born with this knowledge!

In years of teaching math, it is rare that students...

Know how to compute interest, or even understand interest.
Know how to compute a mortgage payment, have even a clue how much a small change in interest may cost.
Know what a future value is.

A financial fitness course covers these topics, and they are most important in life.

Comments

Human Simulation is Possible - by Humans

Human Simulation: Agent-Based Modeling and the Computational Case for Our Reality 1. Introduction In the essay, we introduce the notion that humanity could be a deliberate simulation based on an extremely simple single-celled organism, hardly anything more complex than that. This will allow an (apparently) new interpretation of the notion that humanity is simulated, but that there is no master engineer at a massive number of dials and switches, responsible for every twist and turn of our universe and lives. We begin with the notion that the universe exists and operates under its own laws. So, given the Earth [2] , when and where life first began, it was infused with a living agent, self-actualized, reproductive, and with other basic rules for its operations, interactions, and much of what single-celled organisms do today. The idea from this occurred some years back when writing code in ActionScript (formerly Flash), I was able to create...

No Sympathy From Me

Suicide Coming Home Many years ago, a friend hung himself in his basement. I was a pall-bearer at his funeral. I was shocked I was so asked. I did this. I did not understand why a good-looking fellow, intelligent, kindly, and true could do such a thing. He did. I do not. His family suffered greatly. Yet he left no issue. Thankfully. To my mind Country singer Mindy McCready, 37, showed us the very height of personal selfishness by committing suicide. By giving birth to two offspring, she accepted the responsibility to raise her newborn and six-year old son. She abrogated it spectacularly. (As did the father a month ago.) Though she may have suffered depression for any number of reasons, she has little sympathy from me for leaving behind a legacy that is now lost, is now parent-less, and may drift into problems of their own in the future. There is shame and heartbreak in all this, but blame should be...

UNCERTAINTY IS CERTAIN

Uncertainty is Certain G. Donald Allen 12/12/2024 1. Introduction . This short essay is about uncertainty in people from both secular and nonsecular viewpoints. One point that will emerge is that randomly based uncertainty can be a driver for religious structure. Many groups facing uncertainty about their future are deeply religious or rely on faith as a source of comfort, resilience, and guidance. The intersection of uncertainty and religiosity often stems from the human need to find meaning, hope, and stability in the face of unpredictable or challenging circumstances. We first take up the connections of uncertainty to religion for the first real profession, farming, noting that hunting has many similar uncertainties. Below are groups that commonly lean on religious beliefs amidst uncertainty. This short essay is a follow-up to a previous piece on certainty (https://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2024/12/certainty-is-also-emotion.html). U...

First Blog

Search This Blog