It's necessary to teach personal finance management skills at school

Social networks have been talking in recent days about a video in which young boys and girls attending Sneaker Fest Impact Con 2018 revealed the prices of products and bags they wore. 

The costumes were worth tens or hundreds of millions of dong. The value of the clothes was several times higher than the annual income of most Vietnamese.

The owners of the costumes were aged 14-18 and do not earn money.

“The kids are big squanderers. They think it’s easy to make money and throw money out the window,” a comment on a social media site said.

Meanwhile, Le Quynh Hoa, a parent in Hanoi, commented that overspending by rich kids shows they don’t have skills for personal finance management.

Psychologists and education experts say children should be taught personal finance as a curricular lesson.

Psychologist Dr Tran Thanh Nam from the University of Education said that children need to receive lessons to improve their finance management capability. 

In families, parents need to talk with kids about the value of money. Parents need to think about how much pocket money they should give children. 

The amount of money should be reasonable so that children have an opportunity to show their management capability.

“If parents give more than enough money, they won’t be able to help children practice their money spending skills,” Nam said. 

He said that Vietnam should follow education models applied in developed countries, where children are taught how to manage money when they are 5-6 years old. 

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, lessons about the skill are absent from curricula. The shortcoming, according to Nam, needs to be fixed when the Ministry of Education and Training compiles the new program for general education.

Trinh Hoa Binh from the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS) said parents need to equip their children with knowledge and skills on financial management. 

Binh said that this is an important skill in modern times and teaching the skill is useful advice to both the poor and wealthy. 

Vu Thu Huong from Hanoi University of Education said she taught her children the value of banknotes when they were at preschool. She thinks parents need to talk about the real value of money and she often brings her 2-year-old child to the market with her.

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