In my country, economics is a topic thats not covered anywhere, and of course no such classes exist, except in a few, economic focused schools.
I think it would be very important to teach people about money, their finances, how to save, how to manage money, what investment opportunities there are, how taxes work, how insurances work, how loans work etc.
In my country im pretty sure the reason there is no such class, to keep the masses financially illiterate so they get into as much debt as they can, dont save, and are never going to be able to get free from the grind.
One simple fact iv heard, completely shocked me. If I save x amount every month between 20-30 age, and then never touch it or add money to it again, I will have more money by retirement, than if i saved the same amounts between 30-til retirement. In the model the interest exists above 5 percent and its fixed all the way. But its still shocking and puts things into perspective. Such things sould be taught in a math class, but even better, at a separate economic class
Where they should also teach people about how different insurances work, like the unit linked scams, how banks operate, how government bonds work, how credit cards work, how brokerages and index funds work, how important it is to have 6 month worth of wage as a backup in case shit hits the fan, etc, to guide people from early on towards consciously building up their wealth, and not blowing their first paycheck on the first new iphone, or to get scammed by the naive friend who got sucked into an insurance MLM scheme selling unit linked products to unsuspectin friends and family. Also teach them how to do personal budgeting, to always write down everything they spend money on and how much it was to track it, how to pay bills,
and to just show people that finances arent that complicated, and they shouldnt trust others with the money they make or inherit one day. There is this misconseption in most peoples minds that finances and investments are complicated, and they should just trust others at insurance companies and banks, instead of signing up to one of the well known brokerage accounts themeselves, and just buying these low cost index funds every month for very cheap, instead of some expensive product sold by the bank teller.
So why doesnt the EU make a rule, or decision, to encourage member states to have such a curriculum in high schools about economics? Or is it only my country thats financially that illiterate? I doubt it, because a classmate works at an insurance company, and they told me that in Austria (we live in Hungary) basically everyone has this terrible savings mixed with insurance, and they dont think much of it, they consider it good.
Blows my mind, because i would assume that a country that didnt have socialism, would be more financially literate than a neighbouring one, where nobody even knew what the stock market was before the system collapsed….
Thanks for the anwsers