By Ms. Kashvi Jindal
When teaching students about the core abilities they will need in life, such as Maths and Scientific concepts, we must not overlook another critical competency: financial education. Students today face an increasingly sophisticated, digitised, and dynamic financial marketplace, therefore it makes no sense for financial content in the classroom to remain stagnant. The traditional approaches to financial education, such as teaching discrete skills like how to write a check, are no longer sufficient. Instead, financial education should address broader concepts that impact students’ behaviors and their understanding of financial systems, the workplace, and their communities.
Advantages of Financial Literacy in Career:
Being financially literate also plays a significant role in shaping the career opportunities of students and helping them set course for achieving seemingly unachievable goals.
Budgeting and Money Management: Financial literacy helps you create a budget based on your income and expenses. This skill enables you to manage your income effectively, ensuring that you have enough money for basics such as housing, transportation, and education. A well-managed budget decreases financial stress, which can impair job performance. Furthermore, financial literacy helps you allocate resources for continued education and personal improvement, ensuring that your skills remain current.
Tax Management: One of the most significant benefits of financial literacy is the ability to comprehend tax legislation. This will help you optimise your tax returns and reduce your tax liability. This additional income can be used to pay additional education, start a side business, or explore career options without incurring significant financial costs.
Entrepreneurship: It is critical for persons with an entrepreneurial mindset to understand how to save and make financial plans. As a result, if you want to start your own company or work as a freelancer, you must be financially literate. If you want to freelance, you must correctly manage your company’s finances, including budgeting, pricing, cash flow management, and tax compliance, as well as your personal money. This will ensure that no matter which job route you take, you will not fail.
Negotiation and Career Advancement: Financial knowledge can help you negotiate job offers, promotions, or pay raises. You will be able to effectively assess the financial implications of your decisions and advocate for fair compensation. This will help you advance to greater career heights and seek opportunities that suit your financial status.
Consequences of Inadequate Financial Education:
There are long-term consequences of inadequate financial education, such as personal financial challenges affecting employee performance, highlighting the importance of preparing students for financial success. Financial instability resulting from poor financial decisions made due to a lack of education can also hinder career advancement. Individuals who struggle with debt, insufficient savings, or credit issues may find it challenging to seize opportunities for career growth or take calculated risks in their professional lives. This financial burden can become a roadblock to achieving career milestones and ambitions.
Quality of Life and Emotional Well Being: Also, Inadequate financial education can take a toll on an individual’s emotional well-being. Stress, anxiety, and worry about financial matters can lead to burnout and mental health issues, affecting not only job performance but also overall life satisfaction. These emotional challenges can hinder the pursuit of career goals and personal development.
Limited Job Mobility and Opportunities: Poor financial decision-making, often stemming from a lack of financial education, can limit job mobility and access to new career opportunities. Individuals may feel compelled to stay in unsatisfying positions due to financial constraints, missing out on more promising career paths or industries.
In conclusion, the importance of individualised instruction and culturally sensitive approaches to financial education can not be overstated. Furthermore, the skills taught in a modern financial education program extend beyond personal finance and are relevant to college and career readiness, consumer rights, and student empowerment. It also underscores the importance of equipping students with 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.
Educators need to collectively evaluate and improve financial education systems by treating financial literacy as a complex and dynamic construct, using research-based approaches, and establishing robust frameworks for evaluating financial literacy skills. The goal must be to empower students to take control of their financial futures in an ever-changing economic landscape. As the global career stage evolves, we face an increased necessity of modern and comprehensive financial education to prepare students for the challenges and opportunities they will encounter in their lives after graduation.
(The author is Ms. Kashvi Jindal, Founder of InvestTheChange, and the views expressed in this article are her own)
