Economics helps you to better understand what you are already doing. It’s not that economics will teach you what decisions to make in life. Economics only tells you how people generally behave. Do you believe that knowledge might be of use to you?
Well, think about this -
You go to a vegetable market and the other person charges a particular price. How do you decide whether this price is high or low? Suppose you know that he has no other option and it’s the evening time of the day and his vegetables are going to rot tomorrow, do you think you should pay more for it?
When you are negotiating for your salary, how much do you think the other person would be ready to pay you? Do you know what are the factors affecting the company’s decision? Can you influence that decision by offering them something unique or by being more affordable for them?
If a political party asks for your vote on the promise of minimum wages to all the people, do you support them? Do you know what are the implications of paying free money to people (such as MNREGA scheme)? What if they promise to pay free notes to all the people of the country, do you agree with them?
Do you travel by Ola/Uber? How do you decide whether you are okay with surge pricing or not? Do you have any other options (substitutes)? Can you consider walking that way if it is too expensive? When does it become “too” expensive for you, is there a formula?
Should you save your money in a bank account or should you invest it into the stock market? What are the factors affecting the returns on your money? Do you know what is the cost of borrowing a loan? Should you incur your expenses in cash or is credit card a good way to spend?
You know what’s funny: people may not have studied economics, but they all face the above situations in life. And yet, we all deal with it. We make economic decisions every single day. You may or may not study economics, but you cannot avoid economics. It is as much a part of human society as biology is.
There is nothing about economics that you don’t already do in life. Studying economics helps you only by trying to understand how you reach those conclusions. When you get to understand that, you will then be able to relate those concepts to a lot of situations in life. For example, for all the above situations, I have studied an economics concept which helps me to predict how people behave in various situations.
Most of what I am saying though, is more relevant for a newly developed branch of economics, called behavioural economics. This subject deals with human behaviour in a much more detailed and appropriate way than crude economics (which assumes that all human beings are rational).
Anyway, knowing economics is not an absolute necessity, it is just an added skill. There are other skills as well that you can master, instead of economics - such as sports, music, business, cooking, horse-riding, fighting, writing etc.
But you need to choose what you want in life, because you cannot have everything. There is a scarcity of resources at your disposal.
Source
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-advantages-of-learning-economics-1
