Almost 100% of Canadians believe it’s important to develop good financial habits early in life, finds a BMO study. And 96% agree teaching financial literacy will help the economy.
Further, 43% believe children under nine years old should have a basic understanding of finances, while 79% believe pre-teens should have a solid grounding on personal finance matters.
“The survey results clearly indicate that Canadians put a premium on getting to our kids early to teach them the basics of personal finance and that we, as a society, need to place more of an emphasis on this,” says L. Jacques Ménard, chairman of BMO Nesbitt Burns.
To address this issue, the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education (CFEE) launched a program to help young Canadians learn more about money. Talk With Our Kids About Money Day, supported by BMO and taking place on April 17, encourages families to have more financial conversations at home by offering online resources and tools.
Read: Raising financially fit kids
Those interested in the program can visit www.talkwithourkidsaboutmoney.com.
Additional survey findings include:
- 18% of parents spend a lot of time discussing money and financial matters with their kids;
- Parents spend significantly more time talking to their children about school (62%), their hobbies (50%), their friends (47%) and their future (37%) than about financial matters;
- 96% believe schools need to do more to teach children and teenagers about finances;
- 31% rank financial literacy as one of the top three most important subjects to teach children in school, comparable to social sciences and humanities (32%), and ahead of physical education (20%) and the arts (8%).