Should we worry about a crash of the housing market? Let's all take a deep breath

Thats because the majority of the population are financially illiterate. I think the education system is deliberately not teach the population financial literature. Otherwise whos going to pay tax YOY until they are 70.

 

You do have to wonder. The more I learn, the more I wonder what I did throughout my education. I also consistently meet brilliant minds (Doctors, Lawyers, Designers, etc) who have no idea about money.

 

there is still quite a bit of denial mentality that this will be a significant drop. But I have seen the shifting towards the 'acceptance' phase. Even the 40% figure is getting chucked around here a lot and discussed about over what timeframe when previously 40% was considered 'laughable'. Interesting seeing the changing sentiments even on this forum.

 

I learned all my financial literacy from my parents, money magazine and property chat. I learned nothing from school or even a Bachelor of Commerce.

 

I learned my financial literacy by watching my dumb parents and asking WTF and vowing not to follow in their footsteps. It also helped that my first real job was in the Finance Company section of a Big 4 Bank writing up car loan documents and other Business Loans all day for four years..

 

Financial Literacy is taught in High School Maths (these days) but I bet all you financial geniuses didn't pay any attention.

 

At school they tried to teach maths to this financial genius using peices of wood painted different colours.

Cuisenaire rods - Wikipedia

They might be teaching financial literacy in school these days but not in the 70's.

That said, I admit I did gloss over a bit during trig. I'm a gun a ratios though.

 

I moved on from Rods when I got into year two.

In the 70s? I didn't realise you are as old as I am

I glaze over in Trig all the time My students love it, I can relate to them.

I'm excellent at calculating the cost to carpet a house or pave the pool area, though

 

I personally do not see widespread drops of 40% on the cards. Its not gonna happen from everything I've seen so far. I'll reassess in 6 months . But if high demand areas have a significant correction I'll be the first happy Larry to jump in head first .

 

True story . I got 6% in my year 10 trig exam. I hated maths so much, found most of it useless to me and I have no patience to do anything I feel is a waste of time . After the teacher (who i couldn't stand and who couldn't stand me) handed it back to me and asked me what I thought about my result, I proceeded to take out the staples and eat the exam swallowed down with coke. Then left.

 

Sounds like something I would do.
But I was such a goodie goodie that my worst Maths exam was only 47%. That was the term that I spent every maths class looking out the window at the Senior Boys Phys Ed class on the oval. I aced Economics in Year 11 and 12 though.

I had a crush on a few rowers, cue @wylie

 

I done good in maths at school (english not so much ) and apply it wherever I can. I've even used trigonometry a couple of times in the last year! I think it prepared me quite well to manage my finances, aided greatly by the invention of the spreadsheet and personal computers since I left school. Having said that, I know a lot of people who sat through the same maths that I did and can't even work out what discount they'll get at a 20% off sale .

 

I was a late starter. I did all sorts as a youth. Travel, volunteering, moving around a lot. I didn’t settle into a career until my 30's.

 

Years ago I worked at a local council and I had the calculate the ridge height of a shed using trig. I didn't remember the formula but I can google

Anyway, my section didn't have a calculator with COS, so I had to ask the building surveyors. They had the right calculator but no one knew how to use it!

20% is easy. It's just double 10%

 

I did similar but for a tree height. Dr Google confirmed the simplest way to do it was to walk back from the tree until you could just see the top of the tree at a 45 degree angle then, since tan 45 degrees is 1 and tan, from good old SOH CAH TOA, is also opposite (height) on adjacent, you could work out the height to be the distance from the tree plus your eye height from the ground (the latter length because of the second isoceles right triangle you form in making the measurement from above the ground). "Nerd alert!" was all my wife could say

 

Omg....bringing back bad memories. ...

 

Finally a use for Trigonometry.

I work out the height of a tree by estimating how many double garage lengths it is (x 20 feet or 6 mt). The year 9 text book does real life examples measuring ladders, cliff faces and light houses, but these aren't the normal things a 14 year old cares about.

I always tutor Maths in relation to buying clothes at City Beach. Grandma gives you $200, so what can you buy with that? What change will you have? What if shirts are 2 for $70? The teacher just drones on straight from the textbook.

Relational Maths is the new Black. My school has posters with different sized blocks of chocolate pinned up in every classroom, but I like to discuss getting the girls' hair coloured - the hairdresser charges extra for long hair because she needs to use more product, and the boys' haircuts are always cheaper than girls'.

 

Bring on the market crash!
I just cashed out some nice spending money.

 

My teachers made maths really boring too. In reality, you can do some really interesting things with maths... like making lots of money if you understand compounding

When I was at uni, I had to do a night school make up class in maths. Those teachers were great and showed lots of useful things to do with the maths they were teaching us.

Every job I have had since uni needed maths skills, so there was no reason for my high school maths teachers to make the material so irrelevant.

 

Just sold my U.S house. The difference (in L.A) at least is people actually earn high salaries compared to syd and melb. The median wage is driven down by the swathes of low paid jobs, but the average office worker earns a lot more than in Syd and Melb in my experience.