Financial Literacy at a glance

One of the regrets of my life was not being able to educate myself earlier with personal finance. Even though it might not seems to be too late to have acquired at least some at the age of 26, I think life could be better if I start to accumulate them at the age of 16, which is exactly ten years ago.

Now, let's just forget for a moment about the recent "revert back to Bahasa Melayu" in the education system. The issue that I would like to talk about today would be, "Financial Literacy". Financial literacy of course refers to the ability to understand finance and also creating awareness in oneself one the matter of personal finance. This is one area that I think pretty much important and should be in-line with other subjects.

We have been taught to get good education and then get a good job since we were young. Not that it is bad, not that it is not good enough but maybe - I would not set aside any possibilities that it is not good enough but the reality is, most of us are merely a product of a textbook and nothing more than that. Most graduates are not well prepared to face the hard truth of the working world, what more to say on personal finance - which is not on any syllabus at all.

Robert T. Kiyosaki said in his books, I've forgotten which one; there are three types of education that everyone should have,

1. Academic education - I mean before you can be financially literate, you need to be able to read, write and understand at least the basic education right? At least you go to school, complete it and not dropping out so that at least, even that you're not a graduate you would probably get the idea of what the news are saying.

2. Professional education - Tertiary education in case you don't have a clue. These are obtain via entering universities, colleges, vocational universities, liberal arts colleges or institute of technology and by completing them of course.

3. Financial education - This determined our financial station in life.

And most of us, sadly stopped upon completing our professional education. Most of us are amongst these average Joe's who go to work, get paid and pay bills, fullstop. Even if you don't want to get rich, if you don't want to get into deep shit for the rest of your life, you better start to equip yourself.

Now, talking about this financial education, I came across a website a while ago and I thought the idea was brilliant. It was something that I would like to call very thoughtful of them to educate our younger generations on the importance of financial education. It is called Money Tree.

Money Tree was established to provide the financial skill and knowledge to youths aged 9 – 22 , which would be required to build a career or business, as well as plan for their financial freedom. It has been created to fill the void left by the education system and school curriculum and to explore the opportunities available worldwide to further the dissemination and propagation of high-quality e-learning programmes utilizing state of the art technology, and to groom the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Being that said, this academy is like a tuition center for kids to acquire basic knowledge of personal finance. Isn't that marvelous?

Let say if they have classes for folks like me, I would certainly go for it because for me I have so much more to learn and being in this field I think it will be an advantage for me to have all these in my head. Last Saturday I was supposed to attend a seminar organized by I-Fast Caoital at Wisma MCA, Jalan Ampang but due to office commitment I could not make it. It's free anyway. As what was listed in my resolutions for last year, I told myself to go to seminars and invest in it for myself. Missing this one would not dampened my spirit in doing so.

Any courses that you want to bring me too?