[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is never too early to teach your children financial management skills. Research has actually shown, the earlier you teach your children financial management skills, the earlier they get equipped to deal smartly in a world where they have to handle finance on a daily basis.
Sadly, despite the fact that all of us have to deal with money on a daily basis, many adults grow up without learning anything about financial management. Until the current efforts of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to put financial literacy on the agenda in Nigerian schools, it was never discussed. The result is that many Nigerian adults are financial illiterate with huge consequences on their personal and family finances.
Parents have the first responsibility to teach their children financial literacy. It is a critical responsibility of adult life that parents must not neglect as it has a significant impact on the financial health of their children in future. It is important to build a nation of financially responsible adults.
However, the challenge with asking parents to teach financial literacy to their kids is that most parents are also struggling with it. So, it becomes important for the government to intervene and push financial literacy programmes to the general population to cut across both parents and their children.
The financial health of the population is important as it impacts on economic and social well being as well as the effectiveness of even economic policy. For example, increasing financial literacy would influence financial inclusion in a country like Nigeria where large segments of the population are financially excluded.
The next article in this section will deal with how to teach kids financial literacy.
