Florida to force students to be financially literate to graduate. No balanced checkbook no diploma.

[Hekate]

27. Before I moved out at 19 1/2, I initiated a conversation with my father in which I asked him...

… for basic information that I had never gotten from either of my parents. We had no money.

In all honesty, all my mother knew how to do was be poor — we were well-fed and my entire wardrobe was pretty good hand-me-downs, and a place to live was never in doubt, but extras were out of the question and everything was an extra and she was the one who had to say it.

Dad was a silent man. But he brought home the paycheck. So I sat him down at the kitchen table with my pen, a stack of paper, and the Want Ads, and started asking him basic questions about rent, utilities, groceries, and so on.

That was it. Nothing about checkbooks or credit cards. Nothing about how to find a job that paid a cent more than minimum wage — he could have gotten me a job at his unionized plant, but no, that was his world. I didn’t even know how to ask the right questions of employers — or my college.

I just don’t have a lot of faith in the financial intelligence of high schoolers. Well-off or poor, they are in their parents’ bubble — until they aren’t.