United States
See also: Financial Literacy Curriculum See also: Financial Literacy MonthThe US Treasury established its Office of Financial Education in 2002; and the US Congress established the Financial Literacy and Education Commission under the Financial Literacy and Education Improvement Act in 2003. The Commission published its National Strategy on Financial Literacy in 2006. The Jump$tart Coalition has championed personal financial literacy in the United States since as early as 1995.
While many organizations have supported the financial literacy movement, they may differ on their definitions of financial literacy. In a report by the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, the authors called for a consistent definition of financial literacy by which financial literacy education programs can be judged. They defined financial literacy as “the ability to use knowledge and skills to manage financial resources effectively for a lifetime of financial well-being.”
The Council for Economic Education (CEE) conducted a 2009 Survey of the States and found that 44 states currently have K-12 personal finance education or guidelines in place. Due to differing criteria, the Jump$tart Coalition only considers 24 states to have a component of personal financial education required. Results from the Jump$tart Survey of Personal Financial Literacy indicate low levels of financial literacy among American youth.
Additionally, automobile finance companies and retailers provide consumer education through Americans Well-informed on Automobile Retailing Economics.
Also, Northern Illinois University started a campus-wide Financial Literacy Initiative in 2009 with a program called Financial Cents. Financial Cents provides college students at Northern Illinois University with the tools and knowledge needed to make sound financial decisions during their college careers as well as after they graduate. Other public and private universities across the United States have implemented similar financial literacy programs.
Read more about this topic: Financial Literacy
Famous quotes related to united states:
“In the United States adherence to the values of the masculine mystique makes intimate, self-revealing, deep friendships between men unusual.”
—Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, introduction (1991)
“The rising power of the United States in world affairs ... requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism.... Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate.”
—James Reston (b. 1909)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)