This article is one of the winning submissions from the first annual New York Post Scholars Contest, presented by Command Education.

Imagine you are an 18-year-old high school graduate preparing to embark on the terrifying unpredictability of life and college ahead. Tax day arrives and you are desperately trying to file, send or gather the money you need to pay. You rented an apartment and your rent is due in a matter of days, but you don’t know how to pay for it and you don’t have the time to stress while you juggle your minimum wage job as a barista and your college classes in a big, foreign city. This isn’t theoretical—this is a reality for many struggling college students living in today’s world.

Financial literacy, as defined by Investopedia, is the understanding and application of enough financial expertise to maintain a stable life. This is a core skill to have in the current day economy since finance has become a prominent part of everyday life. Teenagers and adults alike struggle with student loans, starting businesses, and simply knowing how to manage their income for taxpaying. The first step in fixing this long-standing issue is to teach students about this early on so that they will not be faced with this problem later.

According to a survey of 30,000 people held by AIG Retirement Services and EVERFI, 47% of college students reported feeling unprepared to manage their money. The National Financial Educators Council found that 54% of millennials worry they will not be able to pay back student loans and 81% of millennials with a college degree have at least one debt. How is it possible that succeeding in the modern world requires us to have a mastery of dealing with money, yet an astonishingly low number of teenagers are actually well-prepared with this skill for life outside of high school? How is it possible that the heaping pile of debt students leave college with is left unattended for years because they do not have the skillset they need to manage it while they are still in school? 

By teaching finance classes in high schools nationwide, teenagers will be well-equipped with the fundamental knowledge they need in college and life after. According to Forbes, a mere seven states require students to learn about personal finance: Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia enforce at least a semester of personal finance before graduating. In Virginia, the Board of Education requires an economics class and financial literacy for students in middle and high school grades. Their courses teach students about personal living and finance, managing money in a bank, taking care of debts and countless other lessons involving all kinds of money issues. It is impossible to thrive in a world that relies on this system if you aren’t proficient in it. Finance classes are so crucial to student development that they must be taught as a mandatory class rather than an elective or after-school activity so that everyone is given the same opportunities.

I, a current junior in high school, have no experience with the world of taxes and face many adversities ahead because of it. I overhear conversations about having to pay bills and worrying about credit scores without understanding what it means. And living in New York, a fast-paced environment that does not stop to show a new employee how to cash a check, it is difficult to keep up. Perhaps they could imitate the financial education style of Virginia to better equip students with this knowledge. The Financial Education Initiative at the University of Chicago says that 50% of high school seniors wish they learned personal finance in school.

One might suggest that another asset can be learning these skills from parents. But what about those who come from an immigrated family? How can they learn if their parents are still learning? And what of the teenagers that do not have parents, who struggle living on their own and cannot deal with the “eviction notice” slipped under their door?

According to National Financial Educators Council, low-income workers with an employer-sponsored financial education are 11.5% more likely to be involved in 401(k) plans and save enough money for retirement than those who did not have access to this kind of education.

Generally, the minimum working age in the U.S., according to the Department of Labor, is 14. This means that many young teenagers with paying jobs have access to large sums of money. How do they know how to open a savings account or issue a credit card? Enforcing economics courses and approaching them as a necessity for learning rather than a trivial addition to the curriculum, students will learn from a young age how and why to save money. Starting these classes as early as one’s freshman year of high school ensures that students will depart for the next stage of their lives with at least a basic understanding of personal finance. 

For those who claim that most schools do not require finance classes because it would be difficult to keep up with constantly changing tax information, consider the alternative: students will venture into life with little to no education on this matter and will face problems such as poor credit, bankruptcy or housing foreclosure. Of course, some may not even know what these terms mean because they never learned them in the first place. Shouldn’t we be given at least the option to take a financial literacy course? How dependable and well-prepared are the future generations if they can’t even tell you how to pay rent or taxes by the end of the month, a necessary skill but a potential challenge for many when they start their lives?

An 11th-grader at Abraham Joshua Heschel School in Manhattan, Messer would like to pursue writing.