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Why Financial Literacy Should Be Taken Seriously & Taught To Everyone

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Maddy Pappas
Why Financial Literacy Should Be Taken Seriously & Taught To Everyone

The media often mentions the growing number of people that “live pay check to pay check,” but few stop to think what that really means. The phrase – which refers to people scraping by with their costs and income essentially at parity – also means that fewer people than ever have the means to cover sudden expenses.


In fact, well over half (56 per cent) of people wouldn’t be able to cover a $1,000 emergency expense. There are a broad range of economic factors behind this, of course, but it highlights the importance of financial literacy and the need to understand why that $1,000 threshold is considered such an important statistic.


What is financial literacy?

In simple terms, financial literacy is having the understanding of your financial situation and the ability to analyse and determine the impacts (positive and negative) that will occur with the financial choices you make.


Here’s a simple example of financial literacy in action. Over the last decade, there has been the emergence of digital assets on the blockchain, such as cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum and so on) and NFTs (digital artworks “minted” on the blockchain so that they’re non-fungible). As a new investment opportunity these have been exciting, and there was a meteoric rise in the market and the value of some of these things. For example, trading in NFTs spiked 21,000 per cent to $17 billion in 2021.


These numbers have sounded so big and impressive that many people put a significant amount – if not all – of their savings into digital assets. Then the market crashed. In just one day, more than $200 billion was wiped off the crypocurrency market. Meanwhile, the drop of NFT sales was even more dramatic, down 92 per cent. Many people lost their entire savings in the crash.


Unsurprisingly, studies found that Bitcoin investors have low financial literacy. Were they more financially literate, they would have risked far less of their wealth in such a speculative asset.


How you know that you’re financially literate

Financial literacy covers everything from setting a budget, understanding the impact of taking out loans, making long-term investment decisions, and understanding the impact of making purchases. A person with good financial literacy will:

  • Understand the need to increase retirement savings as income increases (via job moves or raises).
  • Build an emergency fund with enough money to handle three to six months’ worth of expenses.
  • Understand how to take advantage of interest free periods on credit card balance transfers to minimise the accumulation of debt.
  • Avoid payday loans, short term loans, or buy now pay later services, that come with inflated interest rates, significant penalties for missing payments, and can massively damage the credit rating.
  • Understand the difference between wealth building and making speculative investments.
  • Will understand the snowball debt reduction method.


Someone that is financially literate will find it easier to save money, make the hard decisions to avoid impulse purchasing, and will be much less likely to run into financial distress, or go bankrupt.


In the medium to longer term, they’re going to be the ones in the financial position to purchase a house, start up companies, and enjoy a long and comfortable retirement.


The best time to learn how to be financial literate is yesterday. Failing that, it’s now.


How to become financially literate

Financially literacy can be learned. Someone that is well-educated in financial literacy might even have new career options open to them, as financial planners really just apply financial literacy best practices to other people’s financial situations.


If a potential career in financial literacy isn’t appealing, then a rudimentary understanding of financial literacy can be self-taught, by accessing resources online or in the library and then carefully studying your financial position.


Finally, there’s always the option to go to a financial planner yourself. A good financial planner will help you understand your financial position, build a budget that works for you, and consolidate your debt so that it’s less overwhelming. From there your job will be really to execute on the strategy that the financial planner provides to you, while regularly checking in to ensure that the plan is working to meet your financial goals and needs. Best of all, the longer you engage with a financial planner, the more you’ll start making sense of the nature of your own financial situation.


With debt easier to come by than ever, and inflation and cost of living escalating (even as wages don’t), it’s easier than ever to get trapped into a spiralling cycle of debt and too-large repayments, which inevitably end in bankruptcy. In large enough numbers, this puts a strain on the entire national economy, so for the sake of the nation, teaching better financial literacy is in everyone’s best interests.

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Maddy Pappas
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