New Survey Shows Alarming Youth Financial Literacy Rates

A new survey conducted by Fontaine & Associates shows alarmingly low levels of financial literacy amongst young people -- and the company says the education system has to take much of the blame.

The Licensed Insolvency Trustee (LIT) has been asking people across northern Ontario to fill out an online quiz on its Facebook page. The quiz is made up of ten basic money management questions.

With people between the ages of 14 and 25 years old, the average score was only 56%.

Fontaine & Associates North Bay Manager, Joel Grise, says the quiz results back up what the company is seeing at its offices.

“Over the years, we’ve seen more and more young people coming in looking for help with overwhelming debt issues,” says Grise, “We are able to help them through either a consumer proposal or bankruptcy -- but there’s no doubt we spend much of the time providing basic financial literacy information.”

Older people who took the online survey scored around 70% on average. Although it could be better, Grise says it shows how basic financial education like proper budgeting isn’t being taught as much in school anymore going back as much as 20 years.

The Ontario government recently announced it’s going to introduce money management classes into high school -- but Grise says, even more is needed.

“It’s good to see it finally being acknowledged as a problem,” says Grise, “We have an entire generation of people who lack the basic information when it comes to budgeting, managing money and avoiding bad debt. We know parents are busy with many things, but I’d strongly encourage them to start teaching their kids about finances at home -- because you may be surprised how little they’re learning in school about it.”

Grise says there are many online government financial literacy tools for both parents and teachers to utilise when trying to teach young people. Fontaine & Associates has also produced a number of videos and infographics aimed at teaching people how to manage their money. It can be found on their website: fontaineandassociates.com -- where people can also take the free online quiz to see how much they know.