How financially literate are Singapore’s youth | In Your Opinion Podcast

Summary

In this episode of the In Your Opinion Podcast by The Straits Times, hosts Ernest Lewis and Te Yong Yi discuss the results of a survey on financial literacy among Singaporean youth aged 16-34. Guests Subashini, a member of the inspirited community for youth leaders, and Kenneth, a National Youth Council member and former co-founder of Seedly, share their perspectives. Key findings from the survey reveal that a significant number of young people engage in financial planning and have a degree of confidence in their ability to manage their finances, although the overall confidence is not very high. The episode explores essential financial literacy concepts, the influence of social media on financial behaviors, and the importance of personalized financial planning. The discussion also touches on issues like the rise of digital financial tools, the role of insurance, and the need for financial education from relatable sources.

Highlights

• Over half of surveyed youth engage in financial planning, yet confidence levels vary 😅.
• Robo-advisors and fintech innovations are popular among the youth for easy and accessible financial management 🚀.
• Guests discuss the importance of starting financial education early, but personalized to real-life contexts 💡.
• FOMO in investments like crypto is common, but caution and informed decision-making are advised ⚠️.
• Insurance is highlighted as crucial for financial stability, yet often underestimated by the youth 🛡️.
• The gap between financial planning interest and actual confidence suggests a need for better educational resources 📈.

Key Takeaways

• Singaporean youth show moderate engagement in financial planning but need more confidence in their financial skills 🤔.
• Social media plays a big role in influencing financial literacy and behaviors among young people 📱.
• Understanding of financial literacy varies; essentials include savings, insurance, and investment basics 📚.
• There's a rising trend in using digital tools and robo-advisors for managing personal finances 🤖.
• Financial literacy education should be personalized and aligned with individual life stages and goals 🎯.
• Youth are looking for relatable sources and platforms for financial advice, not just traditional methods 🌐.

Overview

The Straits Times' latest podcast delves into a survey exploring the financial literacy of Singapore's youth, who show decent engagement in financial strategy but lacking strong confidence in execution. Hosted by Ernest Lewis and Te Yong Yi, the podcast features insightful discussions with Subashini and Kenneth, who bring diverse perspectives from their professional and personal experiences in the financial world.

Guests highlight the burgeoning influence of social media and digital tools in shaping young people's financial habits. Despite a plethora of accessible information, the challenge remains in tailoring financial knowledge to personal needs and long-term goals. The conversation encourages youths to seek out credible sources and adopt financial practices aligned with their life stages.

The podcast underscores significant topics like the merits of starting financial literacy education at appropriate life stages, the importance of cushioning finances with insurance, and being discerning about investment trends. Through engaging narratives and personal anecdotes, the episode paints a comprehensive picture of the current financial literacy landscape among Singaporean youth.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction & Topic Overview The chapter "Introduction & Topic Overview" introduces the podcast series produced by The Straits Times, hosted by Ernest Lewis along with co-host Te Hong Yi, who specializes in covering Manpower news, issues, and the "Ask ST Jobs" column. The chapter sets the stage for the topics to be discussed in the podcast.
• 00:30 - 02:30: Survey Results & Initial Reactions This chapter focuses on the release of a new poll on financial literacy among youth aged 16 to 34, conducted by the National Youth Council. The results are to be published on March 1st at youthopia.sg. The podcast features two youth speakers discussing their efforts to improve financial literacy and their reactions to the survey results. One of the speakers, currently a lead designer at Think Place Singapore, shares his insights.
• 02:30 - 06:00: Essential Financial Literacy Concepts The chapter focuses on the importance of driving change from within systems by collaborating with visionary leaders across various sectors including public, private, and non-profit. It highlights the role of community engagement in fostering the next generation of youth leaders, with specific reference to initiatives in Singapore. Additionally, the chapter mentions Ken Lowe, a notable figure who co-founded Seedly and is now venturing into healthcare startups while serving as a National Youth Council member.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Personal Experiences with Financial Literacy The chapter focuses on personal experiences with financial literacy, featuring a discussion from the National Youth Council in support of Forward Singapore. A significant survey result is highlighted: over half of the respondents engage in financial planning, with about one-quarter intending to start. The key insight shared is the possession of skills and knowledge necessary for effective financial management.
• 09:00 - 15:00: Trends & Challenges in Financial Literacy The chapter titled 'Trends & Challenges in Financial Literacy' discusses survey results about individuals' confidence levels in managing finances and achieving financial goals. Nearly half of the respondents somewhat agree, more than a quarter agree, and the remaining disagree about their ability to manage finances and meet their goals. A notable link is drawn to another survey question about confidence in actions towards long-term goals, with the top response being 'somewhat confident.'
• 15:00 - 21:00: Investment & Risk Management The chapter discusses the general sentiment of investors towards their financial planning and ability to meet long-term goals. A survey indicated varying levels of confidence, with some individuals being somewhat confident in their efforts, and some agreeing that they are somewhat engaged in financial planning. The narrative then turns to individual insights, asking for personal opinions on the effectiveness of these planning strategies, highlighting an increase in awareness due to advertisements in recent years.
• 21:00 - 27:00: Financial Tools & Apps This chapter discusses the advent of financial tools and apps, particularly the rise of Robo advisors, which are becoming a popular topic in social media conversations about financial planning. While many people might be aware or have begun taking steps in financial planning, the insights show a trend of people becoming more financially literate later in life. The chapter reflects on how the general public is getting involved in financial planning, with many having at least a basic understanding or engagement with such tools.​
• 27:00 - 33:00: Improving Financial Literacy among Youth The chapter discusses the surprising findings regarding financial literacy among youth, particularly in the context of prevalent advertisements and the abundance of available knowledge. The discussion includes reactions to survey results by participants, who are in their late 20s to early 30s. Kenneth shares his surprise, reflecting on his seven-year experience working in Sydney.
• 33:00 - 42:00: Challenges in Understanding Financial Concepts In this chapter, the focus is on the transition of finance into the mainstream, largely attributed to the rise of robo advisors and fintech companies. With their increasing marketing budgets, these companies have been at the forefront of democratizing financial concepts for the general public. The chapter also touches on the boom of financial advisory platforms and individuals on social media, such as TikTok and Instagram, where financial advice is being dispensed, highlighting figures like the 'comic book salary man.'
• 42:00 - 45:00: Conclusion The chapter discusses the behavior of individuals in relation to financial markets, particularly during downturns. It suggests that as market conditions worsen, people tend to engage less with their Robo advisors and financial applications. Despite a general sentiment of readiness to engage with financial matters, there is a noted lack of confidence among individuals.

How financially literate are Singapore’s youth | In Your Opinion Podcast Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] this is a podcast by the streets times [Music] in your opinion a podcast series by The Straits times I'm your host Ernest Lewis joining me to co-host is my colleague at SD Te Hong Yi and he covers Manpower news and issues as well as the very useful ask St jobs column welcome hongi you want to tell us the gist of our
• 00:30 - 01:00 topic next thank you Ernest recently 500 youth participants aged 16 to 34 were surveyed in a new poll on new financial literacy commissioned by the National Youth Council and is being released on the 1st of March at the website youthopia.sg in this podcast we've invited two youths to share their thoughts on how they try to be more financially literate and their thoughts on the surveys results is currently a lead designer with think Place Singapore an organization driving
• 01:00 - 01:30 change from within the system by partnering with forward-thinking leaders in the public private and not-for-profit sectors she is also a member of the inspirited community that Champions the next generation of youth leaders in Singapore Ken Lowe was previously the co-founder of seedly till last year and he is now looking at new startup ventures in the healthcare sector he is also a National Youth council member this podcast is brought to you by the
• 01:30 - 02:00 National Youth Council in support of forward Singapore so welcome to the show subashini hi I'm glad to have you on Kenneth thanks thanks for having me on alright so I wanted to run you by one of the first highlight results from the survey and basically this was the finding over half of the respondents said they engage in financial planning with a quarter saying they plan to now this is the key statement I have the skills and knowledge to manage my
• 02:00 - 02:30 finances and meet financial goals half said somewhat agree more than a quarter said agree and then the rest said disagrees one of the other results that was interesting to me that stood out and sort of links back to this first survey result was this question how confident are you that you are doing what is needed to meet your long-term goals and the top response is similar because the stop response is somewhat confident
• 02:30 - 03:00 second top response is not really confident and of course it goes down the line very confident and not confident if you look at both survey results somewhat confident that they are doing what is needed to meet their long-term goals and somewhat agree that they are engaging in financial planning so what are your responses to this with your own personal backgrounds like subashni what about you do you agree with that I think over time message in the last few years there's been a lot of advertisements as well as
• 03:00 - 03:30 social media conversations about financial planning so I'm not surprised that I think generally somewhat people know about it or have taken certain steps to actually look at it I think with the Advent of lots of Robo advisors so I think the the three results doesn't look surprising but personally for me I think I started quite late personally for me like being a lot more aware and stepping into it was much in later in my 20s so it is interesting to know that somewhat agree that means like majority of the population has a food in and not
• 03:30 - 04:00 entirely surprising because of the amount of advertisements I would say or knowledge sharing that's available out there today okay yeah and you are in your late 20s um early 30s early 30s okay all right Kenneth what about you you are in your late 20s or early early 30s okay so what is your reaction is it similar to the answers that the survey showed initially I'm actually quite surprised actually because you know we ran Sydney I ran it for seven years and I think from the
• 04:00 - 04:30 time that we ran it Finance wasn't really like this mainstream thing that I think as correctly pointed out right a lot of Robo advisors a lot of fintech companies was all the rich and naturally their marketing budgets also started to expand so that's where we started to see a lot more happening brokerages as well and that's the boom times right so the markets were up everyone was making money you had people on Tick Tock giving Financial advice you have people on Instagram you know with Comics I think book salary man is quite famous among
• 04:30 - 05:00 the youth so you will see this rise but I would also think when things start cooling down a little like now because the the market has really entered bad territory people start to sort of open up their Robo advisors less they start to open up their financial apps less and it's quite true right so yeah let's see I'm actually very happy that people are taking things into their own hands which they always should have so overall sentiment of course is somewhat agree they feel they are ready to engage but the level of confidence is not super
• 05:00 - 05:30 high yet yeah so just on that potential and Kenneth when it comes to the both of you what do you think are the kind of essential financial literacy Concepts that youth should learn maybe I can I can jump in on that first so we used to have a framework a money framework where you sort of look at five different pillars right so everything from spending savings Insurance Investments so the whole idea is that you actually have different pillars and Foundation sort of blocks of your body but I would
• 05:30 - 06:00 say as a whole the the basic things around Insurance like knowing what insurance you need to have that's important and don't leave it to the financial advisor to tell you right and also making sure that you know what the basics of Investments are before jumping in so on the point about not waiting for a financial advisor to tell you so if not the financial advisor who do we learn from or what you know what are the sources that you should draw from then yeah uh chat GPT just joking
• 06:00 - 06:30 actually it's very very good uh if you guys have tried it so you can actually ask complicated Financial questions and you get really interesting answers I need to be convinced of that though thing is right I mean obviously I'm much older than you guys and all that but in I find that these days amount of financial literacy a lot of information out there is so much more transparent than it was like 20 years ago or something like that last time we really had to depend on our agents but now it's it's all there even in the mainstream
• 06:30 - 07:00 media we're covering business news now but I get that the youth are not all the time reading The Straits times or maybe the mainstream videos they might be looking for nuggets of information but why is it that the literacy is still not as high you know and they're not that confident I think one thing I hear repeatedly it's not really mainstream knowledge so being coming from like the Singapore education system I think the hope it's like something you learn as part of your curriculum and not something that you need to source for and I think with a
• 07:00 - 07:30 lot of information sources then comes which to trust which to follow and interestingly there will be competing views right so it goes back back to the individual where I think money is interestingly a very personal matter to manage people have different value systems different expectations right which is where this whole financial literacy or planning for your financial goals even start like you can't really copy somebody else's plan because you may have your own views of when you want to retire how you want to retire and how much money you think you even need
• 07:30 - 08:00 because it's so personalized and so customized I think no amount of information will be sufficient so then an individual needs to know how do you go about absorbing this tailoring it to what you want where do you even start so I think that's always a question that that people prom like okay where do I start who do I trust how do I tailor it for myself yeah you're right on that point about tailoring it for yourself perhaps I could invite both of you to share about what was your first encounter with this concept of financial literacy perhaps just to flesh out
• 08:00 - 08:30 through some of our listeners to see whether their experience is similar on whether there are some considerations that they might resonate with maybe because like I said it started very late for me interestingly it came from volunteering experiences where I often was admit the people session where I see a lot of people coming there because they cannot get proper housing or they are suffering because they have some Financial issues so it was from there that it triggered to me that I better start thinking about my own self and and planning ahead you know this common phrase like you fail to plan then you
• 08:30 - 09:00 plan to fail right yeah and I think I think that was pretty much like where it started in me that I better start somewhere and I went through that hunt where I was reading a lot of Articles and honestly lost I even participated in there was a lot of free events or sessions that you could 10 I think even sweetly organized quite a number money smart and so on I always go in there I feel like wow there's so much to learn there's so much to start but I always leave with like okay what do I do next So eventually I decided it really takes some time to start digesting some of
• 09:00 - 09:30 this information and it's okay to get it wrong firstly I think back to that pillars right I knew like I need to have like good savings and to go for Less risky saving options which tends to be with the banks like fixed deposits I started with that and as slowly as my income went up and I could start portioning out for investment and so on then I started to read more to think about which was my risk appetite that I could fit it with yeah so I think it needed to just start somewhere and and trust my own instincts as well as
• 09:30 - 10:00 talking to friends so I think besides just reading sometimes talking a lot with friends with maybe common values or common aspirations it sort of gave me a bit more clarity of what I was doing I did make some mistakes here and there such as investment link products I think it's very confusing what was your encounter with the idea of financial literacy what was your first encounter like I was uh actually quite fortunate to do this for my startup right so personal finance we realized
• 10:00 - 10:30 very early in 2016 2017 was this thing that was picking up quite a bit because people started realizing that hey you know these things in fact you don't need a finance degree to know what the CPA what is a fixed deposit what is a bond what is a stock what their dividends things like that you can learn it on your own and uh we started off very interestingly with expense tracking because that's like the foundational thing that we saw as a entry point so people want to know how much they're
• 10:30 - 11:00 spending on their FNB like let's say you eat McDonald's or you eat ramen versus you eat at the Hawker center right so all these are financial decisions that you make every single day and we saw that as a as a Gateway and then we started building that out and we launched the community we launched a Content platform we started realizing that people wanted a source of truth that is not just what the bank is telling you or what the insurer is telling you because if the bank or insurer is putting out content it's very
• 11:00 - 11:30 often because they want you to sort of buy that product so how do we give that neutral point of view that is something that is very uh unbiased and very factual out into the community so do you think that in the time that you've since you started seeingly I mean think Concepts like Risk and diversification compound interest all these concepts are they much more well known among Singapore and you these days yeah okay yeah definitely and is because again and you find things on the internet right so
• 11:30 - 12:00 if you really don't understand that clause in your ILP for example if your insurance link policy you should Google it right you should go online you should find out what it means and what it means for you specifically a lot of things can be found online easily digestible and there are this rise of influencers as well you guys would know like Mao lion budget babe work salary man so basically Financial influencers right that are not just some person in a suit because you sort of don't want to learn
• 12:00 - 12:30 from a person in a suit right you rather trust someone that looks and feels like you so that's a trend that we saw okay and that's why we built the community also to harness all these views and crowdsource ideas is the concept of having three to six months of your monthly salary as emergency savings is that very hard to achieve these days or you think that people are still put off by that I think it's a must right because if you see like the recent layoffs um there's so many people getting laid off I think it really gives you that cash buffer uh is it difficult
• 12:30 - 13:00 to achieve I think so so that's why you should put it in a separate account altogether and not touch it yeah same views here I think um recently I guess with DBS and few other Banks like personalizing the app where they actually remind you how much savings you have whether it's three months or not I think that's good alerts and reminder but definitely increasingly it's challenging I think with the reason GST as well as just generally inflation I do think that people's salaries are not increasing at the same rate so amongst Youth and those are starting out fresh
• 13:00 - 13:30 it will be challenging but I guess it's always about how can you start and as soon as you can start it will start building The Habit so even if you can't reach like three months so fast but so long you have it in your mind to get there and that's that's good enough I think I will pick out on the habits side of things is so important the moment you have bad habits like spending before you safe it's it's a naturally very bad move to make right so you should always save before you spend so what are the some of the tips that both of you would give
• 13:30 - 14:00 someone looking into perhaps a financial planning or agent or even using digital tools like Robo advisors for their Investments and have you personally used such Services out there yeah in that time when running Sydney we have to use a lot of these things to make sure that we sort of know what's in the market and I think the good thing is that it's really very personalized to you so I'll give one example right Robo advisors is this thing that really took off like 2017 2018 where you get globally
• 14:00 - 14:30 Diversified low cost investing that is personalized to you and it's convenient you can start with a dollar a hundred dollars it doesn't matter in the past you needed to buy like one whole stock or a thousand of shares right so there's one lot of shares so fractional investing all these things are available to a common man on the street so I highly recommend uh looking at these tools uh but but the big butt and the caveat is that don't invest until you
• 14:30 - 15:00 have your Basics which are your insurance your savings in order if not you will basically be a leaky bucket then I think this applies to both of you have you in your personal circles been seeing the sort of hyping up of these kind of beam stocks or crypto right like that that's sort of formal a fear of missing out because of the incredible appreciation that we have seen then how do you navigate that yeah I think it's super common like on IG you can see a number of friends who are actually um
• 15:00 - 15:30 investing in crypto and happily sharing the overnight boom that they make you know and I think it's extremely attractive because the selling point here is you can make money really fast but that's where there's the big butt again uh the question is always for how long and whether that spare money that you're willing to lose in case anything happens and I think unfortunately the last few months did show a lot of movements and I think like with FTX closing and so on and so forth the crypto Market did show that it is very
• 15:30 - 16:00 volatile right so I think it's only something that people should get in if they are ready to ride the waves and most importantly like for me I only step into this space if I know I can afford to lose the money completely which is how I've kept to myself very grounded on whether I want to step in or not as you can tell I'm not very uh into taking much risk yeah I would say the last two years we have seen this crazy wave of Investments doesn't matter if it's crypto right so any any stock it was all on a massive
• 16:00 - 16:30 rally and that was because of the low interest rate environment right so it was so liquid there's a lot of liquidity in the markets and yeah I mean in all circles we started talking about it we saw it in the community we started writing content about it but the reality is also that these things are very cyclical to begin with and it will always be very much the case because it's human emotions so it goes up it goes down and I think it's correctly pointed out as well you just have to write the waves and be ready to take losses or just hold it up yeah take you
• 16:30 - 17:00 back to what you mentioned earlier right and you're talking about the basics right managing costs actually looking at Cost transactional fees these days there's a lot more financial transparency in all these tools even the banks do it so like you said you have to get these things right in order right because if you're just leaky bucket as you mentioned kind of you're just sort of like paying paying you're thinking you're investing you're getting a lot of returns but actually you're just losing a lot along the way right yeah exactly and I think if these are just one part
• 17:00 - 17:30 of it which are very often misunderstood right so like even like foreign exchange rates like all these things are you can go to Google you can check what is the Google rate and then you can check it with your bank to see what's the rates you're getting and there are so many different ways that corporations and all these tools will want to extract every dollar from you it's just you got to be smarter than this find us on Apple Spotify Google podcasts or via the Google Voice Assistant and Amazon Alexa enabled devices and now
• 17:30 - 18:00 back to our podcast episode back to our conversation with two young singaporeans telling us their thoughts and concerns about financial literacy among youth in Singapore this episode is brought to you by the National Youth Council have both of you encountered the use of binary data apps or have either of you used it before yourselves so it's a very touchy subject because a buy now pay later to me is essentially the same
• 18:00 - 18:30 thing as credit and it's the same thing that is rebranded because it used to be called installments where if you can't pay in full you pay in three three or four parts and if you think about it the reason why they are giving credit to people is because they can't get it in the traditional way and very often the youth which I'm personally very concerned about right if you want to buy the Air Jordans or if you want to buy the Yeezys or the nmds right and then you would sort of go and then instead of
• 18:30 - 19:00 being 200 you paid 60 or 70 dollars in entry three installment so it's a perceived value of like spending more than you have which to me I think is not very good Financial Prudence yeah and it's actually quite scary because if you don't keep track and if you're using the same function on different apps for example then you may lose track how many other places do you owe money for and you actually don't know your actual expenditure and it's quite scary I think um especially starting out with like minimal income and you don't know how
• 19:00 - 19:30 much you are actually expending over X number of months um and when you can't track it and then you get into a situation where you end up in debt and I think that's like the last place that financially when you're talking about financial well-being or being educated financially like that's the last place to get into yeah the worst thing is that people when they get into debt then they try to invest which doesn't make sense so like some people they are in student loan that's their in property that um Mortgage Debt but they also want to invest a lot externally but
• 19:30 - 20:00 if you think about it when you actually clear down your debt you are actually earning that four percent five percent however much interest you are paying which is an immediate return rather than trying to put it in the stock market to try to earn a 15 where you can lose yeah 50 right so I think the priorities need to be focusing on where your leaky buckets I go back to the Leaky buckets analogy and by now pay later doesn't help because it just forces you to have more payment outflows rather than inflows yeah of course there's snowballs
• 20:00 - 20:30 in your debt your credit debt then you're just paying if you're paying minimum payments or that's even worse than it snowballs and then yeah all those years that you're trying to spend to clear it actually that can be spent in minor Investments actually you don't need that much actually right you just need maybe 100 everyone keeps saying they need ten thousand dollars to invest but actually you don't yeah okay so I want to get back to the one of the Highlight results from the survey and
• 20:30 - 21:00 this was in regards to financial literacy what's the most important the majority said Investments for them actually is very important and then interestingly the next three rank quite closely so it's savings for retirement inflation and then cpf what about you guys I mean what are you interested to find out when it comes to financial literacy how do you get to that Investments part if you can't sort out all your Basics your savings for your retirement inflation and cpf yeah I
• 21:00 - 21:30 actually feel that that is also very on Trend which is where everyone is talking about investment so naturally becomes the most important to them but personally I feel actually the one that is really missing from that list it should be insurance and I don't say this because you know I have I'm not a insurance agent or I'm not a financial planner but the thing is that if you think about it logically I always ask this question when I talk to the the team and the community back then in Sydney is that
• 21:30 - 22:00 what is the investment that pays you the most when you need it the most and it's insurance right because if you think about insurance is really the time when you get into a car accident when you can't work anymore right and you get this payout that you really needed the most when it's urgent so that to me is foundationally important however it's not as attractive as Investments because Investments is you can get rich fast quick so yeah that's that's that Gap in perception in my view okay
• 22:00 - 22:30 yeah I think for me it's interesting that cpf is kind of running slow because personally for me I think a lot of our money actually goes there and it will be interesting for me to actually find out more in terms of how can I better make use of the money in there especially if there is an announcement as well right in budget um where they're gonna basically be contributing more um but yeah I guess investment is really because people want to make money fast and it always sounds the most attractive but it's also the scary place to kind of put more of your attention on I do think
• 22:30 - 23:00 the other aspects including savings and insurance are equally important and cpf why so is because it covers many aspects like I think people always think it's just retirement and you don't see the money but actually even the OA account you kind of use it for big expenditures that will come soon in our lives whether is it housing or education for children and stuff so I do think like there can be more like Financial knowledge and literacy may be shared on that aspect yeah thanks so another notable result from the survey is that six in ten of
• 23:00 - 23:30 those you've surveyed said that One-Stop portals that consolidate information on financial literacy would be helpful to improve their financial literacy and almost half also talked about hoping for increasing support from their workplaces or digital campaigns to raise awareness on financial literacy so what do you think can be done to better improve financial literacy among youth in Singapore actually I just attended a youth engagement session last week about about this whole topic on you
• 23:30 - 24:00 know Rising costs and how they want to manage and I'm not sure if one stop portal and we know that the result says like that's the most common or popular a lot of people ask for bite size information that they can easily consume and I think it needs to be accessible and from a platform that they frequent by by chance so I guess your Spotify Tick Tock are some of the platforms that they're after but at the same time I think who is it coming from like early on Canon spoke about some of the influences and so on so um I think it's important whether it's coming from
• 24:00 - 24:30 credible sources and they can sort of see their lifestyle sort of matching with these people who they're talking about as well because a lot of this financial advisors or knowledge needs to come from people who they can relate to in the first place which is when I think they'll be able to consume it better and see how to apply like to their own lives yeah true oh you kind of I've always had the view that Finance is a tool so it's never the angle so for example you want to buy a house you actually want to live in the house then the loan becomes the
• 24:30 - 25:00 mechanism or the tool the the mortgage for you to get that house you want to buy a car because you want to drive in the car so you take out a car loan Dubai you want a pair of Air Jordans it's the same thing so I think when it comes to financial knowledge and literacy contacts does matters a lot at that point in time when it becomes important that's why there's a lot of talk about making financial literacy this thing that you learn in school I have a contrarian view to that because I feel that in school you get pocket money of fifty dollars to me it doesn't really
• 25:00 - 25:30 matter because you're not earning three thousand dollars when you first start work so in in our case we were very clear our Target users were always the people who were fresh graduates because at that point in time that is when their lifestyle and their spending habits really get formed not when they have fifty dollars to manage so I think the context of when they get information is very very important your first paycheck your first credit card your first savings account all those decisions you make will really set the tone for the next 40 50 years all the way to
• 25:30 - 26:00 retirement actually I think it depends when the market starts intervening in their lives like I met with interns who are still studying but at that time they are really too active in Maplestory and so on and they already started learning how to make money and expenditure at the same time because they are kind of the target audience of some of these gaming world right so I think if we need to keep up with times as to when they are being the market consumers and I think at that time right opportunity wise it should also come in line when he mentioned about when you get the first credit card that's so interesting
• 26:00 - 26:30 because back then like I think just walking around The Interchange or MRT Station you become the source of income for these credit card companies they'll be coming after you and that's when you're like oh credit card should I get one or not and there's so much of freebies that comes with it right yeah yeah so I think it's it's good to also follow with the market kid and know when are they trying to attack the consumers yeah that's true so what do you think are the most kind of difficult concepts for someone who's just starting out with financial literacy to really get a good
• 26:30 - 27:00 understanding of I think the idea of assets and liabilities that was one big thing I learned early on that I think is important so your house is it an asset or a liability well it depends again because are you staying in it is it drawing down is it creating any revenue for you when you're renting it out so I think these things actually do matter because when you think about Financial Freedom which is ultimately the end state that everyone wants to get like Financial Independence retire early right that's the fire dream that a lot
• 27:00 - 27:30 of people have to get to that point you need to understand things like asset and liabilities and these are things you can learn over time and that to me I think is one important concept apart from the saving spending cpf yeah I think for me another may not be very Finance specific but it's really understanding needs versus ones I think people don't know really how to work that out for themselves and know how to work on it over time because the reality is commitments may increase over time depending on their own goals and how do
• 27:30 - 28:00 you keep revisiting this so I think the concept of knowing what its needs and wants and the concept of knowing that financial planning is an ongoing thing it never stops actually yeah and I guess the key thing is that you've really got to want to make the effort to read up about these things educate yourself you can't just continue going out there drinking bubble tea and thinking oh why don't I know this why don't I know that you know you've got to make an effort to find out yeah yeah that's why I think again context do really matter a lot so again when you're a student all these
• 28:00 - 28:30 things don't really matter so much to you at that point but once to me the biggest point where it sets a direct action is when you get your first paycheck because that's the first time in your life you get three thousand dollars two thousand dollars whatever much amount and what you do with that first two thousand matters a lot so thanks subashini for giving your thoughts on youth financial literacy thank you thank you so much for having me here and thanks Kenneth for all your insights as well thank you well that's a wrap for in your opinion a podcast series by The Straits times I'm Ernest
• 28:30 - 29:00 Lewis and I'm taeh Hong Yi if you resonate with the points traced do share this podcast episode with your friends and family if you like to read our columns there are links in our podcast text description this episode was brought to you by the National Youth Council thanks for listening [Music] that was a podcast by The Straits times send your feedback to podcasts at sph.com.sg find us on Apple Spotify
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