CPA Canada and the Student Success Centre teamed up to run a focus group on personal finance for students. This was quite an amazing event – they offered $40 compensation and pizza for 1 hour’s time!
The focus group stratified by year and on campus/off campus. I participated in the upper year (3 & 4) off campus cohort. The facilitator asked us very basic financial literacy questions like, “what does money mean to you”, “what do you know about credit”, “how much do you spend a month”. It was very interesting to hear perspectives of my peers on the topic of money (nowadays considered a taboo topic).
Given this focus group lured people in with the $40 incentive, it probably didn’t represent the student population properly – we all had some degree of interest and knowledge on this topic. I overheard the organizer had trouble filling the focus groups – people even declined to participate when they were campaigning! That meant lots of students were ambivalent to the option for an easy $40 and pizza for a meager hour’s time! They definitely wouldn’t have done the RBC statement challenge a few months back.
Despite that, it was also interesting to know many people didn’t really have a firm grasp on the concept of credit. The general consensus was, “its important, but I don’t know what it does”. One girl even replied, “I used to pay off my CC full, but my mom told me to only make the minimum balance because it builds credit. Banks like to make money off you and that’s why it builds your credit”. -_- the credit counselor also present at the session had to intervene immediately to inform her mistake.
Overall, it was a very interesting and worthwhile experience. I realized there is a general, pervasive lack of financial literacy, even in undergrad, is and needs immediate attention.