Below is a transcript of a story that airs November 6 and 7, 2009, on American Public Media's Marketplace Money.

Some school districts offer courses with a personal finance focus. In Los Angeles, there is a requirement for all public high school students to take a course called Life Skills. It teaches the basics of budgeting, savings, and ethics. Youth Radio's David Dominguez thought the requirement seemed silly---until now.  

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It seemed dumb to take a class that taught you how to live . . . well, now I know.

See, in 9th grade, I transferred from a public high school to a charter school in Los Angeles. So I skipped out on taking a class all my public school friends had to take: Life skills.

At first, I was glad I missed out.

Now that I'm a senior, I know I missed out on something important. Big financial choices are waiting for me around the corner: credit card applications, paying for college, saving money. How do you decide when to splurge and when to save?

My friends who took Life Skills said it forced them to talk to their parents about money. They had to create a budget. Figure out what to spend, how much to allocate money.

But I lucked out.

I’ve never had $5,000 a year to spend at the mall, but that’s the average amount teens spend per year on retail, or at least it was. A new study from Piper Jaffray says teen spending is down 14 percent this year. My friend Rose Powell and I know all to well about cutting back, “Now we definitely go, oh we should go do this. And then the first question is always like, how much does that cost?”