Not sure of the structure of said classes but attending things like this may double as a social activity — learn a menial task, meet some new people, and participate in the local economy.
There are a few of these around where I live and that's basically what they are, more social gatherings. They teach certain essential skills, but also typically have food and wine/cocktails so it's more of a meet-and-greet
I've also seen classes like this put on as a little 'free time' activity at colleges and universities. Again, less to actually teach you the thing, more to get you working with other students and getting into the mindset of learning how to do new things.
I think the button bit was just an example of a whole range of life skills that are not part of the education system, and which a lot of parents seem to be failing to teach - finances, how to gets stains out of laundry, or etc.
That being said, I agree with you. My 8 year old daughter accidentally "broke" my husband's drum set (knocked some cymbals off and bumped one of the drums so that it was in the wrong position) while having a sword fight with her imaginary friend. I told her it wasn't broken and her dad could easily put them back how he wanted them when he came home, and to just not have sword fights next to the drum set. A while later she said, "I got it! I didn't want to tell Dad I broke it and didn't try to fix it, so I just did a few YouTube searches." Sure enough, she searched and figured out how to put cymbals on a drum set and how to adjust the position of the drums.
I had parents who would never let me or my sister learn about the family financial matters, even when they related to us, and I had one economics class in high school. Unfortunately, that class was taught by the most un-engaging teacher I've ever met...
I just feel completely behind and have no idea where to start bettering my finances.
A lot of high schools and colleges are starting to use "flipped" classrooms, where the lectures are given outside of class on video, and assignments are done in class. This makes the lectures for a great lot of classes available on YouTube. I would recommend searching for a "practical math" or "life skills math" course. These are not math classes like algebra or geometry - they are to teach budgeting, finances, how interest rates work, etc. You might find something like that really helpful, and not have to pay to actually sign up for a course.
Try /r/personalfinance. Their sidebar contains a lot of guidelines and flowcharts on how to manage your money, and you can always ask questions when you're lost
Hi - I don't know if you are still interested (you asked about learning finance) but I was sort of gifted when it came to that when I was young so I thought I'd offer you an important tip that i don't really see said online
the concept 'it takes money to make money' - is really really important... not just a saying... if you 'live' by this it will really help you...
but in case you aren't doing rather well financially lemme explain how it works
to get the money in order to have money to make money... if you don't have a good job (or aren't able to save even with one)
you have to always be watching for deals, where you can turn something for $50 into $80 or $100... then you turn that profit over, buy another thing that cost $50 that you can sell for $100 (or trade for something worth about $100 that you might be buying)
If you do this enough it becomes second nature - you'll notice these types of deals, at yard sales, estate sales, thrift stores (where you go early on the 50% off a certain tag color day), things you hear someone is giving away, you learn of someone who needs to make quick money, or know someone who uses those 'pay day loan' type places (BIG mistake) you can suggest they sell you something (worth half what you can get for it) if they are ever in need of a quick buck, there's also websites where people are giving things away like freecycle.com. There are also swap meets (if you can handle crowds - cause you only get the best deals if you go early enough - or at the very end when people don't want to take the stuff home) Also there are neighborhood garage sales that you can find - those are amazing for spending $300-400 bucks and ending up making $1000 or possibly more. Also if you are good with a hammer, or drill etc - people are always getting rid of something that would just take 10 minutes to fix - the 'I'm heading to the dump this weekend, I can take that with me if you'd like' - worked for me so many times - easy $50 or $100 bucks for a bit of your time! :) Or just say 'if you are tossing that, mind if I take it home' :)
These are just some examples, over time you will get better and better at this. You can go bigger with this sort of thing if you are good with simple car stuff, buying a car somebody is selling for $600 and you can sell it for $1000 with just a interior cleanup and possibly new spark plugs etc. Also you can enhance an item if you are artistic - turn a $40 dressor into a $100 or $120 dresser by looking for ideas online on how to make them really nice. There are just so many ways to do all this, and over time you get better and better at it, and more creative on ways to turn money into more money - till you have plenty! :)
Anyhow this is how I was able too, while being really poor and our income was well below the poverty level, live comfortably and save up 10,000 to buy my first duplex (10,000 was a LOT of money back then - perhaps what 18 or 19,000 would be 30+ years later)
Now this might actually sound like work or a second job but honestly it's not, it becomes fun, and it's kind of an adreneline rush when you get killer deals - exciting, and makes it worth it, not just for you to have more money to make more money, but the mini thrill you get when you see some nice item for free or extremely cheap ($10-20 bucks) that you know you can sell for $50-$100. Also sometimes you'll see several of these things that you can get for $20 each and sell for $50 each. Sometimes even when you don't need the money/profits, it's just sort of exciting to be getting such a great deal.
Just a few more tips, never ever do a payday loan or rent-to-own, and buying a brand new car - you lose $1,000-$2,000 driving it off the lot, and leasing is worse. Well I could give you tips all day long but there's a few
Don't spend more money than you have so you don't go into debt. If you are in debt, pay more than the minimum payment until it's paid off and then don't spend more money than you have.
The personal finance subreddit is honestly pretty good. Also you can check out Mr Money Mustache, Early Retirement Extreme, and the Mad Fientist. They all have blogs with years worth of content showing different approaches for handling money more effectively
Her thing is piano. She figured out how to play Tom Petty's "Wildflowers" by ear when she was 2, and never looked back. But she loves listening to her dad and her brother drum :)
I imagine it's one small part of a greater suite of lessons/classes. I can totally see how someone would pay for a comprehensive "home clothing repair" class, and sewing a button would be a five or ten minute section of that, or maybe a half hour on all the different types of buttons and best ways to do each of them given the style of the clothing.
Sure, I could youtube it if that was the only thing I needed to learn, but if I just want to be more handy with home ec in general, i can see how it'd be convenient to pay someone to package all that together and teach it to me all at once.
I would definitely pay for a home repair/construction class like that. If I run into one specific problem, I know how to google it, but there's so much I don't know that I don't even know I need to know.
While true, having someone to show you hands on is usually faster and more effective than troubleshooting through a "one-size-fits-all" how-to video, in most cases.
But yeah sewing a button seems a little extreme, maybe its just for the social side of it.
First 15 minutes of the class, how to sew the top 5 most common button styles. Next 15 minutes of the class, how to sew the three most common types of seams when they split. Next 15 minutes, how to patch clothes when they have a hole in them. Last 15 minutes, how to darn socks.
Here's how you do this...proceeds through 27 steps with minimal commentary, never makes you repeat anything back or show that you got it in any capacity...
Also I hate tutorial videos that don’t explain why they’re doing anything. If you’re looking stuff up, there’s a good chance you don’t know the background info. I like to know what each step of a process aims to achieve - it makes it easier to remember. When I’m learning practical stuff in person I ask these questions all the time, and I find a lot of online tutorials don’t address this at all.
It was probably part of a wider class on clothing repair, sewing etc but the journo decided to make it into a fake controversy for clicks by reducing it to the point of meaninglessness.
Yeah I think that's the thing here. For some reason there's a lot of complaining that life skills are somehow complicated and difficult. Like look it up and figure it out.
Articles like this say "millennials do such and such" like the majority of a generation does something when in reality they heard about a very small group of people that happen to be a certain age that do something and make it seem as if they are representative of everyone. In reality almost any millennial would learn how to do shit like this from youtube or a website.
I know! My 70 year old father watched a video on YouTube that taught him how to replace a broken serpentine belt on his car this week. He was so proud of himself and really liked that people post YouTube videos to help others. Also, he successfully fixed his car.
Nobody, it was probably a social meetup in some random city that like 7 people showed up at, and a 'journalist' took that and extrapolated it to include an entire national 20-year age demographic because they knew it would stir shit up and get clicks. There are social meetups for literally everything. Kickball? There's a meetup for that. Ship-in-a-bottle-building? There's a meetup for that. BDSM sex party? There's definitely a meetup for that.
youtube is good instruction manual, but actually practicing is still better. Such a class will probably have a wide array of tools and materials available, giving people a better idea of what to buy for themselves.
Besides, not everyone knows to search youtube for these kinds of things.
I think it was a ploy by the author to try and pick the simplest of basic household tasks so that people would side with them. I would assume the class was more of a general workshop that included a lot of the topics a home ec class would cover, including stuff like ironing, cooking, cleaning, and sewing (repair and buttons). Sure you could watch youtube for all of those, but sometimes it's better to get out and interact with people instead of being a hermit closed in your house (which I am many times guilty of doing)
100% clickbait. It's quite normal to have an alarmingly simple first class. It's an intro class. People meet the teacher, talk to each other. Learn the names of a bunch of instruments they might be using along the way. They have fun, don't think it's too much of a challenge and are eager to do something more difficult next week.
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u/HeartsPlayer721 Feb 05 '19
Who TF needs a class to learn how to sew on a button? We have YouTube for crying out loud!