Life Skills 101

I am a firm believer that Life Skills 101 should be a basic course in the high school curriculum.  I don't know about you, but there are quite a few basic skills that I, admittedly, had not yet grasped by the time that I entered the "Real World".  Some of them, I still haven't mastered.

This is how I feel when it comes time for to figure out how to file my own taxes.

My personal genius notion is that there should be a class offered that combines Home-Ec and Auto Mechanic with an updated Life Skills course. 

A few examples of things that they don't teach you in school to prepare you for the "real world", that I think they should:

How to properly search for, view, and negotiate the lease of an apartment.  I've never really shared my fun past roommate stories here, but boy have I got some doozies.  So last summer, I decided I'd had enough, and I moved into an apartment SOLO for the very first time.  Sure, I felt super capable and responsible.  Age 22 and taking care of everything on my own.  I have since come to the realization that I don't know everything (there Mom, you have it in writing), and maybe it isn't as easy as I thought to have such a small kitchen area with hardly any counter space.  And maybe the strange positioning of the power outlets throughout the apartment actually is more of an inconvenience than I foresaw it to be.  

The guidelines of credit cards, and tips on how to be smart with your money.  I'm not a credit card person (luckily), but I feel that these rules still need to be thoroughly covered before you turn 18 and are subjected to the endless number of credit card offers that you receive in the mail.  Case in point:  I have a friend whose little sister happened to get married right out of high school.  Her husband made the lucky discovery that the little sister thought the credit cards that she had been receiving in the mail were more "gift" cards than ones that she would actually have to pay back. 

The difference between a modem and a router and how to connect them properly.  Okay, maybe this is just a personal road block that not everyone suffers from, but this one frustrates me so badly!

How to file your own taxes.  This is one of the things that I don't hesitate asking my mom to help me with do for me every year, but for 2009, I worked in both California and New York, so the dual state filing was beyond my mom's easytax.com capabilities.  I tried, at first, to figure out how to do this one on my own, ended up throwing my hands up out of frustration, and then waited til the last minute (literally April 14th) to make an appointment at the tax prep place around the corner from my apartment.  Everyone with an income is required to file taxes, so why is this not a basic skill that we are taught in school??

The difference between an HMO + a PPO.  I still barely know.  I mean, I do know.  But I have to think really hard about it whenever I have to remember which one I think is better.

How to translate the Ikea directions.  Sometimes pictures really aren't the most effective way to demonstrate how to build a 58 piece dresser.  Just saying.

The basics of car maintenance.  I owned my first car at age 17, and when I sold it at age 19, the car salesman that was buying the car asked when my last oil change was.  Oil change?  Well, give me a second.  My cousin owned the car before me.  Let me call her and see if she ever did one of those.  That's right.  I never once in two years even checked my oil.  How was I supposed to know that that was a basic of owning a car if no one had ever filled me in?

Do any of you resonate with any of the things on my list?  Have you ever felt completely uninformed, and a little embarrassed for not having known how to properly work through some experiences you've come across?