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So,
what exactly is
financial literacy?
What's the point of all this, anyway? Well, think of some of your role
models. How do they live? Are they poor and burdened, or do they
have enough for themselves and their families? Some of your role
models may have MORE than enough, right?
These people didn't get to where they are, overnight.
They worked
and saved;
and some of them even invested. These things are what
enable them to enjoy the standard of living they do today. In a nutshell,
financial literacy is the ability to use your knowledge and
skills to make sound decisions when it comes to your
money.
Gaining the knowledge and developing the skills to become
financially literate is a lifelong process that begins with something as
simple as putting a few pennies in a piggy bank, and evolves to more
advanced subjects such as risk and asset allocation.
What you'll be reading about in these pages would help you get on
your way to having a basic understanding of how money works in the
world in which we live. Long ago, you probably wouldn't have had
much use for this publication, since people traded or bartered. For
example, the Amerindians would have given the Europeans food
in exchange for a horse, weapons or whatever was available at
the time. Today, people all over the world use legal tender -
what we know as money. This is why an understanding of
money is absolutely necessary in today's environment.
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