Dharmagirl – your story sounds exactly like mine! Other than a class in high school where we were taught how to write checks from a checkbook, absolutely no education on finances was provided in the public school system in the 1980s. As soon as I got to college, Citibank and many others signed me up and I couldn’t really understand why they would give me a card without having a job. Four years later at college graduation, my credit card accounts had all been turned over to collections and I was even on that “nazi list” chexsystems thing that the banks use so I couldn’t have a checking account. I was totally clueless! My parents had always made me get jobs but had never given me any advice about what to do with the money I earned. So I would promptly spend it all at the mall on clothes and CDs.

Finally when the chexsystems issue started to affect my parents’ bank accounts (because they were on a joint one that I had ruined), they bailed me out but my credit was ruined at age 22. I took a couple of years off to work before grad school, but the debt kept me from entering the Peace Corps, which is what I really wanted to do. I managed to clean up my credit, account by account, by using my credit report and challenging the accuracy of the listings (many of which were wrong). And then I waited for the 7 years to pass. It didn’t take long, within a year of reconciling my credit report with reality, Citibank was back at my door offering me a card. I learned my lesson bigtime, the hard way, and now only use credit cards when I can afford to pay the bill at the end of the month.

I don’t know that much has changed in the public school system. My younger sister graduated from high school in 2002, and she is just as clueless as I was, having had the same parents and presumably, the same public education.