(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Mandatory personal finance education is on its way into the 2023 curriculum of Florida ninth-graders.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed bill SB 1054 into law on Tuesday that will require Florida high school students to take a stand-alone personal finance course to graduate. The legislation passed unanimously in the state House of Representatives and Senate in early March.
“This will provide a foundation for the students to learn the basics of money management, understanding debt, understanding how to balance a checkbook, understanding the fundamentals of investing,” DeSantis said Tuesday at a press conference.
The new law will apply to students entering ninth grade in the 2023-2024 school year.
Here are three things to know:
There are personal finance education bills pending in 26 states, CNBC reported. A proposed bill in Arizona would allow a personal finance course to fulfill a math requirement, and another in Tennessee would make personal finance courses mandatory for middle school students, according to Next Gen Personal Finance’s bill tracker.
Bankruptcy officials in Florida — which leads most of the U.S. in bankruptcy filings — have asked for mandatory financial literacy education for years, Tampa Bay Times reported.
“You can see that Floridians, generally speaking, are not financially literate,” said Catherine McEwen, a federal bankruptcy court judge in Tampa who is a member of the Credit Abuse Resistance Education advisory board.
Lawyers and judges who deal with the financial problems facing Floridians identified the need for better education on money matters.
“It’s got the potential to break the cycle of poverty in some families. Kids who might never (otherwise) get this education, will,” said Tampa bankruptcy attorney Stephanie Lieb.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 74: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin returns for a new season of the GHOGH podcast to discuss Bitcoin, bubbles, and Biden. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble?
About 46 million Americans, mostly young people, have student loan debt. Having financial literacy while you’re young is crucial, especially if you’re planning to go to college, said financial planner Jeff McDermott.
When students apply for loans, they’re often focused on paying for their education and don’t realize that they could end with monthly payments of $1,000 or more.
The Florida personal financial literacy and money management course will teach:
