Financial Literacy in the Youth Education System

Financial literacy is the key to educating youth to manage money effectively so that they can become financial stable, build assets, and achieve personal goals. Many young people receive little formal financial education.

The Canadian Foundation for Economic Education conducted a survey in 2018 among youth aged 12 to 17 across Canada to determine whether personal finance is a topic they are interested in. The results indicated that youth want to learn how to manage their money well, earn monies, save, and spend it wisely but they are not getting the assistance they need. They also said that they want to learn about money at home and at school. As the result of the survey, schools are implementing financial literacy program, however, there are still work to be done. It is still important for parents to have a hand in teaching their children. As parents, we need to help our children develop knowledge and habits that can make them more likely to succeed financially later in life. There are excellent resources and program that are offered by the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education at https://cfee.org/program/money-and-youth/. They offered a complete 15 modules in guiding youth regarding money management. This provides a resource to help parents improve their financial capability as they work on improving their children’s.

The program talks about the following:

1. Source of income. How are you going to earn money? It could be chores around the house, shoving snow at the neighbor’s place, or finding a job.
2. How to use and control your money. It is important to learn to control your money and how others can affect your decisions as to how you spend your money.
3. What are your goals? Learn what is important to you. Things you want vs things you needs.
4. Creating a budget and keeping track of your spending. That way you are not overspending and be cognitive as to where you want to spend your money.
5. How to save money so you can make a large purchase such as a new video game, a bed, or a car you have been eying on.
6. Learning about borrowing money, how to pay for it and not get out of control. You don’t want to obtain too much credit otherwise you would in debt and unable to pay it off.

Helping youth build a foundation about the concepts of money will lead them to becoming confident and resilience in our ever changing economic world.