One major cause of all the problems we face as Ghanaians and Africans as a whole is financial illiteracy. I always say, "Financial illiteracy, if not solved among Ghanaians, will not allow Ghana to fully realize her vision." Financial illiteracy has led to poor financial choices which have negatively affected our financial well-being. Whoever lacks financial education, more often than not, makes wrong financial decisions.
According to www.investopedia.com, "Financial literacy is the education and understanding of various financial areas. It focuses on the ability to manage personal finance matters in an efficient manner, and it includes the knowledge of making appropriate decisions about personal finance such as investing." Financial literacy is also defined as the ability to understand how money works in the world - how someone manages to earn or make money, how that person manages it, and how he/she turns it into more. (www.wikipedia.com)
Financial literacy has a key role to play in everyone's life irrespective of their field of study. Knowing how to make money propels you to make more and more money. A lot of people in Africa are poor because they're most often exploited by profit-oriented businessmen - high interest rates on loans, low earning investment portfolios with and loads of sugarcoated and technical words among others. It's rather so pathetic that our educational system does not focus on this salient subject matter - financial education. Making financial choices is not as easy as ABC. It involves in-depth knowledge and a lot of consideration of other key but diverse factors. Irrespective of your field of study, you must be proficient in financial principles and with concepts such as financial planning, managing debt, profitable saving techniques and the time value of money. Most times, we end up investing in presentable yet unprofitable portfolios and taking loans with high interest rates which look presentable yet suck our financial blood rapidly.
"To make money, you must learn how to make money work for you and not you working for money"- Robert Kiyosaki. Money is an idea. Develop a system to generate multiple streams of income. Do not rely on your ordinary earned income or your portfolio income. The huge amount of money you have kept somewhere does not make you rich because day in and day out, the prices of goods and services increase, and your money loses its value or purchasing power. The flow of money makes you RICH!
It is unfortunate financial education is not embedded in our curriculum. This calls for personal development. Go beyond the normal you do in class and build your human capital to save yourself billions of cedis.
