Math for the math disabled

I still remember my sophomore math teacher, Mrs. Fromm, intercepting one question asked most every day during her algebra and geometry classes.
"Why do we need to know this? When are we ever going to use this after high school?"
Her answer was usually "Shut up and do it!"
No, not really. Mrs. Fromm was much to sweet to say that out loud to the children who would one day be running her nursing home.
But that was about 25 years ago (see how I used the skills of math that I learned from her). Now I can tell you exactly why we X-generationers needed to learn algebra and geometry.
1. Our computers were overpriced and horribly complicated at the time. There was no way they could do algebra for us, unless we were able to get a computer science degree, which Kellogg Community College did not likely offer in 1989. Even if it was offered, college level math courses would certainly have been a prerequisite for the advanced-level computer classes where you would learn to program computers to do algebra for you. Kind of a moot point by then.
2. We all wanted to go to college to get degrees because we were told any degree would help us land jobs in the bustling 1990s. So we needed those math credits in order to get into good schools for important liberal arts degrees.
3. And this is the big one. Twenty-five years down the road, we would be trying to home-school our own children (something only the fringe denim-jumper-wearing mothers did in 1989, but in the age of Common Core and crappy school lunches -- is a growing movement. Those math skills would be vital when trying to teach our kids to balance checkbooks (a real-world math problem from antiquity), and measure the volume of their bedroom.
And so I began homeschooling my two daughters this week... in math.
I struggled with math throughout school and so avoided it when possible. I did the bare minimum and didn't mind getting some wrong answers on tests if it meant I could turn worksheets or tests in a few minutes earlier.
Now, this same level of care and attention to detail is being visited on me by one of my own children. She recently suggested that, if farmers would give their food to grocery stores, and the stores would give it to us, then we wouldn't need money and wouldn't need to know how to make change. Therefore she wouldn't need to learn about decimals. See, my daughter is willing to become a socialist; to take on the same economy as North Korea, along with it's starving populace, just so she won't have to study math. Brutal psychotic dictators who think nothing of killing you and sending your family to a gulag? No problem, just don't make her learn long division.