As university Devops engineer working with students, I have had a number of opportunities to advice the young in the ways of adulting. One thing that's painfully obvious is that the 'your 20s are your best time to take on risks' crowd is missing is like, women and fertility. Women in the US are generally more risk adverse, so they're more likely to heed the usual 'save now!' spiel. They're also facing a conflict with career risk vs family risk in ways men do not encounter at all. Worse, talking with friends and colleagues about it can threaten your career tracking if you are perceived as a short timer. I've seen too many managers, on HN no less, say they avoid hiring women who might become pregnant.
And as far as I can tell, health insurance is allocated two words in the lecture series: "health" and "insurance". That's it! I will grant you that the ACA is under incredible threats at the moment, but employer based health insurance isn't going anywhere, and at the very least, HDHP / HSA plans vs. PPOs vs HMOs is a thing. Considering how expensive pregnancy, birth, maternity leave, child care can be, health insurance and savings is a crucial topic not even mentioned in the 'couples finances' section.
The other thing I should mention is student loan debt. 92 percent of those surveyed in the Stanford course say they have no student loans. This seems high -- even the net price of Stanford is $17k / year. Most undergraduates are going to be paying like 4.45 percent interest, which is way better than the 6.8 they used to charge. Despite required financial counseling, most people with loans don't really know how repayment works, and haven't looked at how much their payments will be post graduation.
Those are really good points. Plus if you are not a US citizen the whole equation completely changes
My girlfriend is from an immigrant family and left undergrad + grad school with almost half a million in debt without having worked full time in her life, and is completely overwhelmed and underequipped to deal with this. Given how many great engineers and entrepreneurs are immigrants / from immigrant families, financial education programs for undergrads should focus a lot more on these issues
it isn't a matter of being able to pay the loans back, it's a matter of opportunity cost (she is a doctor so will be able to pay the debt back, but if she had a better understanding of finance when she took the loans she would have done some things differently). If you really want to start a company for example, having a lot of debt rules that out. So maybe if you want to keep optionality to start a company, you go to a cheaper public college instead of taking a loan to go to a private one, or you decide to work instead of grad school, or you just save more. If you don't understand the opportunity costs of debt, it's hard to make those choices
And as far as I can tell, health insurance is allocated two words in the lecture series: "health" and "insurance". That's it! I will grant you that the ACA is under incredible threats at the moment, but employer based health insurance isn't going anywhere, and at the very least, HDHP / HSA plans vs. PPOs vs HMOs is a thing. Considering how expensive pregnancy, birth, maternity leave, child care can be, health insurance and savings is a crucial topic not even mentioned in the 'couples finances' section.
The other thing I should mention is student loan debt. 92 percent of those surveyed in the Stanford course say they have no student loans. This seems high -- even the net price of Stanford is $17k / year. Most undergraduates are going to be paying like 4.45 percent interest, which is way better than the 6.8 they used to charge. Despite required financial counseling, most people with loans don't really know how repayment works, and haven't looked at how much their payments will be post graduation.