Does Singapore educate its young enough about personal finance?

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Originally uploaded by panzergrenadier

There are literally hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of questions to personal finance on some of the forums that I monitor and it reveals the abysmal lack of foundations built for our future generations when it comes to financial literacy. I too was ignorant about personal finance until I started working and I learnt some painful lessons the hard way, through losing some of my hard earned savings through investments in unit trusts that I didn't really understand.

Common financial questions
Some of the common questions posed by forummers are simple ones that can be answered by googling or searching for the right websites.

Take for example, this common question:

Q: "Where can I find the best interest rates for savings and fixed deposits"?
A: You can visit Qotion.com or check out the money section under Hardwarezone forums

Another similar question about loans:

Q: "Where can I find the best loan rates?"
A: You need to shop around different banks as loan packages can be customised to the requirements on the customers. You can also visit Dollardex or Qotion.com for some indicative rates.

Others who have just started working begin to think about their insurance needs. While there are a plethora of independent financial advisors, financial planners representing the big life insurers etc. There appears to be a relative lack of resources in our mainstream schools, polytechnics and universities to teach our young about personal finance. How can we be truly building up a nation of knowledge workers who know where to search for information if we do not equip them with the foundational financial literacy skills to chose between the bewildering range of financial products both suitable and unsuitable for them?

Are we leaving our young to the financial wolves
Is it because we want to feed them to the ravenous financial planning industry, the fund management industry, the financial service sector that will sell and sell and sell them the financial products they think they need?

When I started this blog to share what I knew about treasury bills, I am amazed that virtually everyone I talk to in the physical world (including financial planners themselves!) are not aware about how they work and how retail consumers can invest in them either direct with the primary dealers or through poems. This scares me as it shows how a low cost and safe instrument that yields at fixed deposit rates for low minimum sums of SGD 1,000 is given so low publicity while financial institutions hawk credit linked notes and other derivative products to the unsuspecting investing public while relying on fine print and brandishing the famous latin phrase "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware!).

I do not think this is a satisfactory state of affairs. Do you think that we should continue to allow our youth to find their ways into debt, not learn about personal finance until they unwittingly get into trouble with banks, financial institutions, credit bureaus and be declared bankrupts until we are satisfied?

Let me know your views by leaving a comment! I'd love to hear what you have to say be it as a consumer, a professional in the financial planning world or staffer in a bank, financial institution or even the regulator!

Be well and prosper!