Financial usage and money management: Study based on undergraduates in social sciences stream
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2015
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
It is identified that financial literacy (FL) is one of the important factors to the consumer
security by developed economies. Foundation of that view is individuals are decided about the
financial decisions under their FL level. When consider this situation it is very important around
the studies which are financial usage of undergraduate community to accelerate the economic
development process a country.
According to literature, FL is knowledge of individuals around the financial products,
institutions, and concepts. Also, FL is a skill which engages with the interest rate counting,
financial management, financial planning. Globally, by developed countries, FL is pointed as
strategy to face financial crises. But developing countries view about FL differs from that view.
According to them, FL results in access and develops financial services. However, when above
definitions are examined, FL is not only a component of financial stability but also it is a
strategy to economic development process.
Nevertheless, FL is not a single symbol; it is a pool component of people financial behavior.
Financial usage and money management are most important concepts among the sub-themes of
FL. This study focused about the financial usage of undergraduate; formulated to identify the
major objectives such as to identify the knowledge about the financial instruments and to
identify the trends of money management of undergraduates. Simply, financial usage is
knowledge about the financial instruments and institutions and its usage of individuals. Skill
about maintain of monetary resources is known as money management. Sebstad and Cohen
(2003) have pointed-out that improving money management skills has been a focus of
microenterprise training programs for many years. In this context, it can be conclude that money
management is resulted in to develop entrepreneurship environment of the economy. Also, good
money management is critical to the process of accumulating all kinds of assets and preserving
to person. According to that, if individual can access to appropriate financial products and
services, along with the financial skills to manage these resources well, are key to the process of
asset accumulation. So that, financial usage also money management are dynamic components
of individual financial literacy.
Especially, when consider the target group; undergraduates are a most influence factor of
decision making process of country. Also they are dynamic group of the economy. According to
financial literacy, they are group which will be play effective financial decisions in future. In
this situation, this study contributes to develop to appropriate policy makers for dynamic
financial decisions process in the economy based on undergraduates.
Problem and Objectives
According to view of Gillen and Loeffler (2012) based on Jump$tart (2008) and Cude, et. al.
(2006), generally college students are not financially literate. But, those studies have not been
touched specific study field and students financial behavior. Therefore, this study was addressed
that research gap; this study was identify situation of financial usage and money management of
social sciences undergraduates in Sri Lanka. The main objective of this study identifies the most
influence factors of financial usage and money management of social undergraduates. While the
other objectives identify the differences of that study fields and suggest the policy implications
regarding the undergraduates’ financial usage and money management had touched under this
study.
Methodology
The sample was selected from Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of University of Sri
Jayewardenepura. Under the 06 social sciences fields approximately 150 students were
randomly selected. There is no standard set of components of financial knowledge, skills and
tests to determine the levels of financial knowledge and skills of people in the context of the
developing country (Heenkenda, 2014). Also most assessments of financial knowledge and
skills undertaken in surveys, (Xu, & Zia 2012). Thus, this survey focused mainly on determining
how influential were the socioeconomic and household characteristics in determining students’
financial usage and money management skills. The study, being solely quantitative, used
descriptive statistics and regression analysis as tools of the analysis. Statistical tests were
conducted using the statistical software packages SPSS, Excel, Minitab and STATA.
Description
Keywords
Financial Management, Management, Economics, Social Sciences, Entrepreneurship and management