HSBC Malaysia has called on parents to equip young children with basic financial knowledge.
Head of Retail Banking and Wealth Management Tara Latini said children who are exposed to the concept of saving and money management from an early age are more likely to develop good financial habits.
“As they learn more about the value of money, they will be become more sustainable to initiate healthy, honest and constructive conversations with their parents about money,” she said in a statement today (Feb 7).
She said the children would be benefiting from the values of financial education in the form of money management and personal finance for the rest of their lives.
Latini said the importance of financial literacy was recognised by the government with the launch of the National Strategy for Financial Literacy (NSFI) last year – a five-year plan to raise Malaysia’s level of financial literacy, by Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
She said the NSFI revealed that Malaysians have low confidence regarding their own financial knowledge, with one in three rating themselves as having poor financial knowledge.
Therefore, she said promoting financial education and a positive financial culture in children and youth are essential to building a financially literate population capable of making informed decisions.
“As young people develop financial literacy, it may spur their interest in more advanced concepts – like social entrepreneurship and self-employment – that might benefit not only their own families but also entire communities,” she added.
HSBC said parents could help their children to be money-savvy by teaching them to manage the angpow money they received in three basic ways – save, spend and share.
“Discuss with your child about goals for using their money and encourage them to save part of their angpow money accordingly, set up a process for saving money in a children’s savings bank account, this can help you regularly monitor how much has been saved, and talk to your child about goals for using their money,” it said.
It said after putting aside money for savings, parents should let the child spend some on their favourite food, books, gift items and leisure activities, and give them a level of independence but guide them to be a wise consumer.
Parents should also help their child discover the satisfaction of giving by looking at ways they can spend money to help others by donating some of their angpow money to worthy causes, it added. – Feb 7, 2020, Bernama
Picture from youngparents.com.sg
