Let’s be horribly frank – you sat through years of math school solving made-up problems
involving trains, parallelograms, and “X.” But when rent’s due, Sallie Mae is stalking your
email, and your credit card screams in all uppercase — suddenly, PEMDAS is nowhere to be
found.
So now you’re probably asking, “Can personal finance be a math credit?” The short answer
is that it depends. Long answer: Why the hell hasn’t it always?
If paying rent, filling out tax papers, and figuring out interest aren’t arithmetic, then what was
geometry for? (You don’t need to worry; the answer is “absolutely nothing, Linda.”)
Grab a calculator and a cup of coffee, and let’s talk about whether managing a budget is the
same as doing math.
Algebra taught me about shapes. Learning about personal finance helped me stay alive.
If you ask an adult what they remember from math class, they will probably say, “Nothing,
but I can find the slope of a line if I ever need to at Target.”
It’s funny that personal finance is just math. It’s basically math with stress added.
Take a moment to think about it:
To balance your checking account, you need to add and remove.
Interest rates are real percentages.
Taxes are the bad kids of algebra and chaos.
Loans for students? That’s growth that goes up really quickly, but in a sad way.
We’ve been doing arithmetic this whole time; we simply didn’t get a report card for it. Your
credit score is the only thing that counts.
So, certainly, arithmetic is a part of personal finance. But it’s the kind of arithmetic that
comes with food to help you feel better. Unlike geometry, which came with nothing but
bewilderment and graph paper trauma.
Pythagoras walked so that Mint.com could work.
Spoiler: Some Schools Really Do Let It Count (Finally, A W)
Here’s a surprise: some states have finally caught up with the real world. In certain schools,
personal finance classes now qualify as math credits. This shows that miracles can happen
outside of tax refunds.
Financial literacy is now a mandate in states like Florida, Missouri, and Virginia, not just an
option. Like, “Congratulations, you’re finally learning not to sign a contract with a 20% APR
at 18!” “
These classes teach us things we should have learnt a long time ago:
How to use credit cards without damaging your future.
Budgeting that doesn’t depend on feelings.
Loans that won’t kill you before you graduate.
The scary math underlying mortgages (also known as “You’re paying twice as much for that
house.”)
Students get to replace trigonometry with taxes, learn how inflation hurts them, and end the
session with math they can utilize.
Imagine that young folks who just graduated from high school know how to deal with
compound interest, payroll deductions, and not cry during tax season. Revolutionary.
In the meantime, the rest of us are out here Googling “how to adult financially,” which is a
national shame.
The Ridiculous Double Standard: Why Keeping a Budget Isn’t “Academic” Enough
You’d think it would be easy to teach young adults how to handle their money. But traditional
schooling still sees personal finance like the strange relative of “real math.”
Schools will teach 14-year-olds how to find tangent lines, but they won’t explain how to figure
out debt-to-income ratios. Why? Because it seems like figuring out mortgage APR is too
“vocational” and not “academic” enough.
In other words, schools want to be known for being smart, not for being useful. Curriculum
boards don’t look well with Excel spreadsheets on them.
Here’s the kicker: economics is a social science, but personal finance isn’t math. Even if they
both have to do with, I don’t know, numbers.
You can’t pay your rent, but you can at least find the area of an isosceles triangle. That’s
what we mean by “education.”
A instructor is probably stating, “Math teaches how to solve problems.” That’s fine. I have a
problem: I owe $45,000 in student loans. Chad, figure that out.
How teaching personal finance instead of math could help society
Imagine if schools taught kids how to do arithmetic that would help them survive in the real
world instead of punishing them with quadratic problems. We call it “Math That Doesn’t Make
You Cry in Target.”
The course would look like this:
Budgeting 101: Making a list of everything you can’t afford.
Interest Rates: The legal fraud that lets you “buy now, pay later.”
Taxes for Dummies: Because you shouldn’t need the IRS to help you understand money.
Planning for retirement: Learning about compound interest before it’s too late.
Credit Scores: The algorithm that tells you how much you’re worth without meeting you.
The last test? Making a budget that can handle inflation, brunch, and fixing the car.
We received graphing calculators instead, which cost $120 and are currently utilized as
doorstops.
And let’s be honest: if high schools taught a class on “How Not to Go Broke,” half of the
people in the country would be fine by now.
You can’t use geometry homework to fix poverty. Someone should write that down.
Why it seems like financial literacy is optional (but it shouldn’t be)
Here’s the sad twist: even when schools do teach personal finance, it’s not always required.
Why? Because people who make decisions about schooling think that managing money is
“common sense.”
Oh yes, common sense—like not obtaining a mall credit card when you’re 19.
This is the issue:
A lot of folks never learned how to handle money.
Parents give their kids bad financial advice just like they give them family recipes.
Society also sees debt as a rite of passage.
So, generations of individuals only learn about “interest” when they get their first credit card.
If math class is designed to help us in real life, then learning how to manage our money
should be considered math. What could be more mathematical than figuring out your budget
after taxes, Netflix, and emotional damage?
Honestly, anyone who can make their rent work with three days to spare should get an
honorary degree in applied math.
The real arithmetic we all live by is: paycheck – bills = hope + ramen.
The Case for Counting It: Being an Adult Is Hard Enough
Should personal finance be considered a math credit?
Yes. Without a doubt. It’s not just math; it’s math about life and death with higher stakes.
It’s not just fluff to know how much money you make, keep track of your expenditures, and
figure out how much you need to save for retirement. That’s math for life. Math in action.
Math for real life. The kind of schools that should have been more important than learning
angles and cosines.
Most adults don’t utilize the quadratic formula, yet everyone uses percentages when they
leave a tip at a restaurant.
Before interest gives kids pain, teach them interest.
The “Congrats, You Made It to the Real Math Class” Ending
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You already know more about math that really
matters than any geometry teacher ever taught you.
Is personal finance a math credit? Sure. Will it help people in America learn about money?
Most likely not. But hey, it’s a start.
So, if you’re a student asking for relevance or an adult yelling at your tax forms, just know
that every time you figure out your debt-to-income ratio or plan your salary, you’re performing
actual math.
And look at that—you said you wouldn’t use it.
