Prudent Financial Management Practices Among Youth Consumers
Mohd Zamri Abu Bakar
Faculty of Business Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA
Saridan Abu Bakar
Arshad Ayub Graduate Business School, Universiti Teknologi MARA
Abstract
The study aimed to investigate the roles of financial attitude (FA), parental financial socialisation (PFS), financial literacy (FL), and financial education (FE) to ensure successful implementation of prudent financial management practices (PFMP) among Malaysian youth. Designed to use a quantitative approach, the study data were collected using self-administered questionnaires adopted from previous studies and distributed among university students. They were next analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to address the hypotheses of the study. The results showed that only FA, PFS, and FL had a significant and positive relationship with PFMP, whereas FE yielded no significant influence. The results also highlighted severe concerns regarding the effectiveness of FE towards improving youth’s capability to manage their financial affairs prudently. This proved that mandated FE prior to graduation posed less effect and would not lead to behavioural changes among Malaysian youth. Therefore, the country’s stakeholders need to strengthen the FE and enhance its effectiveness encompassing the right FE elements to ensure the current youth population would be able to apply the skills and knowledge they learned in the classroom into practice in the real life. Nevertheless, the findings may help one to understand how and why the Malaysian youths need to improve their current financial practices.
Keywords: Attitude, Socialisation, Education, Literacy, Prudent
