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Kenneth Scott
Professor Packer
English 2010
1 October 2015
Who stole all your money? You Did.
Personal finance has a key role
in each of our lives. Many American
citizens have poor personal finance.
There are several reasons behind this.
One is poor money organizational
habits. Another reason is the lack of
preparation for their financial future.

Figure 1: Money on Fire

We have a large population of undereducated Americans in the topic of their own personal
finance and unless somethings start to change, we will just keep seeing our money disappear.
The future is ahead of us, and it is the choice of every American to decide how we will prepare
for it.
Poor Habits
Have you ever wondered what happens to all of your money that you work so hard
for? Does it seem like your money disappears from your bank account faster than you can put
money back into it? These questions could have many different answers, but it might just be
ourselves that we find to be the biggest culprit in making our money disappear. Benjamin
Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, shares with us why he
thinks we might be the ones to blame for our own money going missing. A man asks, Will not

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these heavy taxes quite ruin the country? Franklin replies, The taxes are very heavy, and if
those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily
discharge them, but we have many others and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed
twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our
folly (Franklin, 155). In this example Franklin suggests that we all have obligations in our life
that take our money away like taxes, but they are not nearly as detrimental to us as our own bad
habits. He goes as far to say that we lose Four times as much as our taxes just by our mistakes.
One simple example of that is the amount of money in the average Americans 401k account.
According to a business report written by Kelley Holland, from NBCNews, the average
American only has $18,433 in a 401k retirement account, with 40 percent of the population
having less than $10,000 (Holland). That is close to the cost of a modest car. If that is all the
money people have to retire with, clearly we are making some pretty big financial mistakes in
our everyday life. It seems that if we could learn how to change a few of these habits or follies,
as Franklin mentions, earlier on in our life, we would all be better off with our finances and have
a more comfortable future ahead of us.
What are we preparing for?
Who has to deal with finances? The answer
is just about all of us. This news is true for
everyone but especially for the teenage years
of high school, up through college graduate.
How is a person right out of high school
supposed to find a job, pay for college, buy a
car, and pay rent for an apartment all with just
Fig 2: Average debt of graduating seniors from college

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a high school education? These are all very real concerns and ones that are becoming a long term
problem for these students all over the nation. A study in 2013 shows that almost 7 out of 10
students took out loans and had an average debt of $27,670. Now if they were to pay $300 each
month with normal interest rates of student loans, it would take them 10 years to have their debts
paid off. That is the average student debt, some of the top schools in America were leaving 87%
of their students with more than $50,000 of student debt. We are looking at close to 17 years to
pay off that student loan (Snider). Is that the destiny of all college aged students, to have a
mountain full of debt that they have to deal with on top of the many other expenses they might
have?
College debt is one major expense young adults soon learn is a harsh reality. On top of
student loans we pile on car payments, living expenses, and what about the cost of buying a
house? The average cost for a house in the state of
Utah is about $214,800 in 2015. That is up 4%
from last year, and is expected to go up another
4.8% within this next year, making it close to
$225,000. It might not be a bad idea to ask
ourselves what is the price of a home going to be
in 10 years or 15 to 20 years. In order to be ready
for this great expense, preparation needs to be
started now.

Fig: 3 rising costs of Tuition (Blue), Houses (Red),

and All other things in general (Brown)

What is being done?

So what is being done to prepare us for these great expenses? There are thoughts about
making it a requirement to take a financial literacy class in high school in order to graduate. In

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March of 2014 only 4 states began practicing that suggestion, Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and
Utah. It is predicted that other states will join in the effort to require personal finance skills in
order to graduate from high school. The question now is, is this new requirement to take one
financial literacy class in order for kids to graduate high school going be sufficient for them to
have real life skills? Should there be more classes required to help them be presented to grown
up life? With money being something most Americans use on a daily basis should it be added to
the core classes like English, math and science and now Personal Finance? What grade should
schools start teaching their students simple skills in handling their money? Once they enter
college, will this be a part of the general classes students are required to take? There are plenty
of these questions we could ask ourselves but one thing is for certain, this problem is all around
us. It is evident, and it will not just fade out with time, unless people are taught how to handle
their finances.

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Works Cited
Franklin, Benjamin, J. A. Leo Lemay, Benjamin Franklin, and Benjamin Franklin. Writings.
New York, NY: Literary Classics of the United States, 1987. Print.
Holland, Kelley. "The Great 401(k) Experiment Has Failed for Many Americans." NBC News.
N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.
Prah, Pamela. "States Lag in Educating Students About Personal Finance." The PEW Charitable
Trusts. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
Snider, Susannah. "10 Colleges That Leave Graduates with the Most Student Loan Debt."
U.S.News. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.
"Utah Home Prices & Home Values | Zillow." Zillow. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.
Fig 1: Slow Motion Free Stock Photos. Digital image. Stockphotosforfree.com. N.p., n.d. Web.
15 Oct. 2015.
Fig 2: Robinson, Jenna A. "CommentariesThe Cost of the College Bubble." The Cost of the
College Bubble. N.p., 29 Apr. 2011. Web. 015 Oct. 2015.
Fig 3: Robinson, Jenna A. "CommentariesThe Cost of the College Bubble." The Cost of the
College Bubble. N.p., 29 Apr. 2011. Web. 08 Dec. 2015.