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What is financial literacy?

Financial literacy is understanding and effectively using various financial skills, including personal financial management, budgeting, and investing. The meaning of financial literacy is the foundation of your relationship with money, and it is a lifelong journey of learning. The earlier you start, the better off you will be because education is the key to success when it comes to money.

First generation challenges

Since family structures, traditions, and experiences vary greatly, the designation of “first generation” might seem vague. Most simply, institutions look directly to the experience of the student’s parents to determine whether they are first-generation students.

If neither of your parents earned a bachelor’s degree, you are typically considered a first-generation student. This designation typically remains even if your parents completed some college, earned their associate degree, or if your siblings, aunts, uncles, or grandparents earned their degree. Using this definition, the Center for First-Generation Student Success found that 56 percent of undergraduate students in the 2015-16 school year were first-generation.

In the United States, the Census Bureau defines low income as a family whose income level didn’t go over 150% of the national poverty level. In 2020, for example, an individual making less than $12,760 is considered low-income. A two-person household earning under $17,240 and a three-person household earning less than $21,720 qualify as low-income. For a family of four, you’d need to earn less than $26,200 to fall under the low-income threshold.

Courses and Activities

Budgeting

Budgeting is a process of projection of revenues and expenses, cash flows, production lines, working capital requirements, capital expenditure, etc., in respect of near future years, which is based on some rationale logic about the future prospects and using the experience in the past till date, presented to the management of the company for decision making.

Investing

Investing, broadly, is putting money to work for a period of time in some sort of project or undertaking in order to generate positive returns (i.e., profits that exceed the amount of the initial investment). It is the act of allocating resources, usually capital (i.e., money), with the expectation of generating an income, profit, or gains.

Saving

Savings refers to the money that a person has left over after they subtract their consumer spending from their disposable income over a given time period. Savings, therefore, represents a net surplus of funds for an individual or household after all expenses and obligations have been paid.

Wealth Disparity

The term “income gap” refers to the gap in earnings between two groups, such as the 1% and the 99%, white and black Americans or, more broadly, the haves and the have-nots. The wealth gap, on the other hand, gets at assets and net worth (assets minus debts), rather than looking at just income.

Activities

Let’s make learning about financial literacy fun through these activities. In this section, there will be games or challenges for you to participate in, depending on what you are looking for. If you want to practice managing your money, we have games for that, or if you want real-world applications, then we have challenges for that.

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