Personal Finance 101

There are some classes you just know are going to be popular in college. Films of the 1960s. The anthology of the Beatles. Protest lyrics with Tupak Shakur. But NPR reports that at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, students are clamoring to get into a far more mundane-sounding course: the fundamentals of personal finance.

It’s telling of the times that this class, taught by Professor Anne Witte, fills up just minutes after registration opens. Witte gets into the real life of economics: examining paystubs, health insurance, credit card interest rates, how to invest for retirement.

Sounds sexy, right? But this type of class may be far more valuable than most to college students, who usually end up learning the hard way how to balance their finances.

Witte sees many of her students – econ majors no less – making the kinds of financial missteps that lead to 20 percent interest rates on credit cards.

We think Personal Finance 101 should be a required course for all students. Perhaps if more of us had learned basics like “don’t spend more than you make," much of the suffering of this past year could have been avoided.

Photo courtesy Casey Serin via Flickr.