the average monthly payment in the fourth quarter of 2025 hit an all-time high of $772, with the typical amount financed also hitting a record $43,759, according to Edmunds.
Longer loan terms, buyers paying $1,000 or more a month for a vehicle than ever before, and higher insurance costs
I’ve owned 2 new cars in my lifetime. A 1971 Ford Pinto & 1975 VW Rabbit.
By age 32 I learned used vehicles were cheaper in the long run especially factoring in depreciation & brand choice.
How can we possibly have time to teach math when we are busy teaching special units on every possible ethnic group.
That’s not what’s happening. Our daughter graduated high school a decade ago. I paid attention to what they were teaching. At least in our district (suburb of Phoenix), they were teaching accurate science, proper math, and accurate history (which, yes, did include “the bad”).
The issue is that schools have problems holding students back a year because parents start screaming “my little angel is brilliant!” (when they aren’t). So, they get passed through the grades, and graduate not knowing basics. Our parents wouldn’t have tolerated that. I knew a few kids who were held back in my day.
We also have a culture that does not encourage impulse control. Quite the contrary, business wants you NOT to exercise control. And then they create sales that are -for some- confusing because they require people do the math in their heads in the grocery aisle to figure out if it’s a good deal (e.g. “normally $1.75, now three for $5!!”).
1poorkid just showed me a clip (Instagram?) where an interviewer was talking to people about their debt. He was interviewing them in Disneyland. People with $100K of debt (credit card, auto, etc) were putting their Disney trip “on the Disney card” because it offered 6 months no interest (after which the interest would be in the 20-30% range). Even in my day, they didn’t really teach managing personal finance. I had to learn that on my own. No different today (but 1poorkid learned it from me). Of course, I had less to spend it on (e.g. there were no computers to speak of, no smartphones, no iPods…PONG was just coming out and was sooooo cool, etc).
If I were to level criticism at our school system, it would be the lack of teaching of personal finance. How to balance a checkbook (though that is becoming less relevant as most people don’t use checks), how to reconcile a bank statement, the benefits of compounding interest, and so forth.
Agreed! It’s gotta be because teachers spend too much time changing the litter boxes in their classrooms. Lots of furries out there…
I remember the good ol’ days when home economics was required to graduate…at least it was in my district.
No disagreement about the lack of instruction on personal finance. It would be interesting to learn if the other options- either charter schools or private schools- are any better at this.
Or in my area home schooling is popular. I wonder how they do on math.
Home schooling is one way to avoid traumatizing your children w active shooter drills. But also exposure to touchy topics like sex education and the liberal agenda. And probably racism.
The math gap has been researched extensively…they underperform.
Ugghh. Not all parents are afforded the opportunity to homeschool their kids. Even if they could, a lot wouldn’t want to. Here’s my take:
In my area home school students are given opportunity to participate in some group activities. First Robotics teams. Some sports and probably more. They do pay property taxes and can use some public school services. That helps w social skills.
Often home schooling parents are college grads. They can do a good job. You worry about kids taught w the Bible as a text book. Home schooling as an excuse to keep kids out of school. Help on the farm. Makes truancy laws harder to enforce. Much potential for abuse.
…to ensure that your kids are not likely to be any smarter than their parents.
The last thing I want my kids doing is trying to learn AP Calculus or Trigonometry (subjects I learned 30 years ago but in no way could teach today) from someone not qualified to teach it. My daughter is taking AP Chemistry currently - it is laughable how little I remember from my Chem days (I think I got a B-), much less would I be able to teach it to her at an AP level.
YMMV.
I’m not sure why you say that. Are you assuming that the teacher is more skilled than the parent is? In many cases, the teacher is NOT more skilled. If you look at “levels of smartness”, and sort by profession, I suspect that “teacher” ranks somewhere in the middle, not somewhere near the top. So it’s more likely to be hit or miss, sometimes a traditional teacher at a school will do better and sometimes a parent homeschooling will do better.
I also don’t think I could effectively teach AP Calculus (I took it nearly 50 years ago!!!) to a classroom of kids, but if I homeschooled, I could very likely learn it along the way with my own kids. And maybe the process of “learning along the way” would give them a deeper and/or better understanding of the topic.
Homeschooling has a different, and bigger, problem (as you allude to above). In my experience there are a few kinds of homeschool families:
It would be nice if we could figure out a way to avoid the bad cases. Maybe mandatory standardized testing and cessation of homeschooling when necessary?
Instruction on personal finance is a different subject than math. But thanks for playing!
It is true that home schooling is more common in some areas than others. However, since states have wildly different rules (or no rules at all) on what should be taught and very different rules on assessments (or no assessment at all) for the home schooled, it would be very difficult to determine what the home schooled are learning about personal finance.
In general, yes teachers are more skilled than the parent is. While the parents may be more skilled in one or two particular areas, teachers are matched with the subjects they have demonstrated competence in. So while in early grades one teacher can handle most everything, as you progress you find that the child moves from teacher to teacher, each with their own area of special expertise.
Let’s pretend the student’s parents are scientists, or maybe engineers.. Clearly they would have more “science knowledge” than some random science teacher, although it’s not clear they would be able to “teach” the subject as well. But let’s pretend that they’re also competent in “teaching.”
How would they score in, say, history? Spanish? Art? Music? Biology? Government? Computer science? Mechanical drawing? How about just simple shop class, home ec, or other vo-tech areas? Does the child participate in chorus? Band? Football? Chess club?
In a decently run high school you will have a fair degree of competence taught in every area, while with a parent you may have one or two, and you will have good socialization and exposure to many viewpoints and possible interests.
(And yes, there will be terrible teachers just as there will be terrible parents; I’m not trying to say “it’s perfect’ just tha on average the professional teacher is probably preferable to the educated parent - and certainly preferable to the uneducated parent, who will say stupid thing like “the liberal agenda” when explaining why they’re keeping their kids out of school.)
Absolutely I am assuming that.
I have a masters and my wife, a teacher, has a masters. We are both in the top 15% of educated Americans.
Who do you think is the better teacher of her subject matter? Hint, it sure would not be me.
You COULD, but then of course you would HAVE TO. Now, let’s assume had no calculus in high school (80% of kids do not take calculus today so most parents today have never taken it). Let’s also assume you have no math in college (again, most parents have not). Think you could still just willy-nilly learn it enough to teach it? How about the other dozen or so topics you must be teaching at the same time?
And, do so at a level as good as or better than someone that has a degree to teach it. Can it happen, certainly. Is it likely, very doubtful.
Early in her career as a learning specialist, Mary Willingham was in her office when a basketball player at the University of North Carolina walked in looking for help with his classwork.
He couldn’t read or write.
And then she found he was not an anomaly.
Soon, she’d meet a student-athlete who couldn’t read multisyllabic words. She had to teach him to sound out Wis-con-sin, as kids do in elementary school.
*On May 18, 1989, Dexter Manley left the nation in shock — at least those who didn’t know the score until then — when he testified before a U.S. Senate panel on literacy. *
*Manley, at the time, was a star NFL defensive end with Washington. Before that, he’d academically matriculated to become a senior at Oklahoma State under head coach Jimmy Johnson, who later coached in the NFL then landed with Fox Sports. *
*On that day, Manley revealed that his entire experience as a full scholarship college student-athlete was fraudulent, as he could neither read nor write. *
*Many were left in shock, aghast. Moral outrage as promulgated by the national news media followed. *
And that gnashing of teeth over such a sickening win-at-all-costs story lasted about, oh, a week.
*The enablers, such as ESPN, made no value judgments beyond national rankings and popularity as to which schools to schedule. *
In fact, in an astounding piece of on-air rationalization, ESPN college basketball know-it-all Jay Bilas once declared that it’s not important if recruited players attend classes because just being on campus improves “socialization skills.”
And now today from Fortune magazine.
Gen Z are arriving to college unable to even read a sentence
As Gen Z ditch books at record levels, students are arriving to classrooms unable to complete assigned reading on par with previous expectations. It’s leaving colleges no choice but to lower their expectations.
One shocked professor has described young adults showing up to class, unable to read a single sentence.
“It’s not even an inability to critically think,” Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of great books and humanities at Pepperdine University told Fortune . “It’s an inability to read sentences.”
Ah, is it any wonder some college graduates are having difficulty finding an entry level position?
No surprise. How can people that don’t know math (or personal finance) teach it? One of many reasons I am against home schooling. As Hawkwin pointed out, home schooling is a way to assure your kids won’t be any better educated than you (I resist using “smarter”, as they may be very smart, but just aren’t taught properly).
In my case, I could help 1poorkid with math and physics. At the high school -and even undergrad college- level, not much changes. I could teach both subjects at that level. But she took AP Bio, and a lot had changed since I took bio in high school. I was pretty much useless in that area. We know so much more, and are teaching it in high schools (well, good high schools). Sure, there are bad high schools, and bad teachers. But, in general, a teacher teaching from a good textbook in a field that they know, is going to be superior to a parent trying to cover the gamut of subjects (which, often, they couldn’t meet the standards themselves).
Just try to tell a Finn about the USAian notions of home schooling….
First comes an inability to even begin to understand why such an insane form of education even exists, then some form of shrieking (laughter and disgust lead the list) and then after you try and explain the bizarre arguments made in favor of such obvious insanity they often become grim, and mention that as much as they admire the USA….well, less said the better I guess.
I suspect that home schooling regs is a compromise solution in many state legislatures. People are passionate in their opposition to liberal agendas in public schools. Home schooling is better than the alternative — even though it has its limitations.
I have visited a Finnish “High School” and those kids could take either side of most current decisions facing Finland and make a solid argument in English for either or both sides.
They would reply to your post by asking why not design a week long preparatory study program on the issues in class and then debate in class.
Like what necessrily happens if a civil society is to function.
What “liberal agendas”? Not teaching the bible and posting the 10 Commandments? Teaching actual science? What?
The only agenda is producing better-educated kids than other countries so that our country has a future.
I think that’s right in most cases as well as generally anything that conflicts with someone’s world view, evidence-based science be darned.
Pete