Many of us probably wished that our parents had equipped us with sufficient financial knowledge when we were younger so that we can be more confident in our money management before stepping foot into the working world.
“Parents play a key role in shaping their child’s relationship with money, as well as putting into practice good financial habits that will serve them for life,” says Goh Siak Koon, Centre Director of IFL.
A recent survey conducted by a team of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students with 336 parents of children between the ages of 6 to 12 found that only 37.9% of parents in Singapore believes that their child has the appropriate amount of financial knowledge for their age.
This inspired the conceptualization of Money Talks, a campaign committed to equip parents with informative knowledge and skills base on the three pillars of childhood financial education: Saving, Spending and Sharing, for them to play a more active role in supporting their child’s financial learning from young.
Since the launch on 4 January this year, Money Talks has reached out to parents through its online platforms and focused on raising awareness on the importance of regular childhood financial literacy.
In order to teach the next generation early to prevent them from incurring debts without a comprehensive understanding of how it works, the team launched the Money Talks Kit, a free, ready-to-use financial education resource for parents with children aged 6 to 12 years old.
The Money Talks kit offers a deck of twelve Conversation Kickstarter Cards, fun activity sheets and other supplementary materials verified by experts from the Institute for Financial Literacy (IFL), to help children practice essential habits like budgeting and make weekly money conversations an easy affair for them to embark on their journey towards financial independence.
Money Talks team is working closely with social enterprise FinCARE to organise an online webinar using the Money Talks Kit, in hopes to boost outreach to the larger community, Swati Sodhani, Head of Content Development at MoneyTree Asia Pacific remarks, “It is important to teach kids how to manage their money at a young age, so that money doesn’t manage them when they are older. Financial education is not just about teaching kids how to manage their money, it is about building their character. It is a life skill that is necessary to make children independent and self-sufficient. And the bonus to teach our kids is on us, the parents.”
You can now redeem both physical and digital version of the kits subjected to 200 redemptions, on a first-come-first-serve basis via the Money Talks website.
Over the next 10 weeks, more handy tips and expert content will be posted to Money Talks’ digital platforms. Money Talks invites you to visit their campaign’s website and join them on social media channels WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.
For more information on the Money Talks campaign, please visit www.money-talks.sg.
