https://www.athene.com/smart-strategies/finances/6-ways-to-improve-your-financial-literacy.html
Athene Holding Ltd. (Athene) is a leading retirement services company that issues, reinsures, and acquires retirement savings products. This article is a brief guide to personal finances. From the point of view of a 21 year old female, these suggestions are ones I have seen before.
I believe that they would work, but how do we make young women/young people in general actually interested in following through with these methods? Is there a trust issue here? Do they just find it uninteresting?
- Subscribe to financial newsletters. Okay, I know I would need to research exactly why this advice is ineffective, but I can’t think of many of my friends who would be willing to do this. I have done this, I delete every email as it comes. Boring stuff in there that I – a financial dummy – can’t understand anyway.
- Listen to Financial Podcasts. Same goes for this one. Teenagers and College Students just have better things to do. I’m a huge podcast listener, and I often listen to financial podcasts, but the fun kind- not the personal finances stressful kind.
- Read Personal Finance Books. Absolutely not. That is something we all wish we would do, maybe even plan to do, but we will never proactively read a book about mortgages.
- Use Social Media. This is not a bad suggestion! There is definitely a rise of financial influencers for men and women. Men are probably drawn to crypto business guys, and I know of a couple Instagram accounts that explain finance in a way women might enjoy more. Definitely not a full education here though.
- Start Keeping a Budget. They suggest you use a spreadsheet or a budgeting app. Probably not a bad idea. I lack personal knowledge on this.
- Talk to a Financial Professional. Nope. Oh, do you mean my dad? Shawn Gregor? That is the closest to a financial professional I ever plan to get. Same would go for my friends, and if they don’t have a family member to talk to… I’m sorry. You probably can’t afford a financial professional if you are reading one of these articles.
The amount of personal helplessness I feel does make me think I could hypothesize the feelings of college students and create a survey based on this.
This leads me to another question I am going to research – Which young people actually ARE financially literate? How are they doing it? Why did they become this way? Can we learn something from them?
And of these young people, who needs this project the most?
