{"id":36216,"date":"2016-11-01T03:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36216"},"modified":"2016-10-31T09:17:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T13:17:00","slug":"november-is-financial-literacy-month-please-stop-pestering-us-with-well-meaning-financial-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/11\/01\/november-is-financial-literacy-month-please-stop-pestering-us-with-well-meaning-financial-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"November is financial literacy month &#8230; please stop pestering us with well-meaning financial advice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/globe-investor\/personal-finance\/household-finances\/financial-literacy-isnt-the-best-way-to-make-us-better-savers\/article32587338\/\" target=\"_blank\">Frances Woolley<\/a> says the various government attempts to cajole us into being more economically minded are mostly a waste of time and effort:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>November is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fcac-acfc.gc.ca\/eng\/financialliteracy\/initiativesprojects\/flm\/Pages\/home-accueil.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">financial literacy month<\/a>. Canadians are being advised: Start with a budget. It is about as effective as declaring National Fat Shaming month, and advising Canadians: Start with a diet. Saving money, like losing weight, requires fundamental lifestyle changes. But it is hard for anyone to change the way that they live.<\/p>\n<p>Take, for example, one of the standard pieces of financial advice: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/globe-investor\/personal-finance\/quit-bashing-my-latte-habit\/article1216386\/\" target=\"_blank\">Give up that morning latte<\/a>, and other frivolous habits, and soon you\u2019ll have saved enough for a down payment on a new home. As someone who works at a university, I have some sympathy for those who rail against millennials with their lattes. Here am I, bringing my coffee from home in a Thermos, and I see students who are less affluent than me sipping fancy drinks from Starbucks. What would it take for them to do what I do?<\/p>\n<p>To begin with, it would take time: an extra 10 or 15 minutes in the morning. Second, it would take capital: a kitchen with a coffee machine and space to store stuff. Third, it would take know-how: coffee brewing skills. Finally, it would take self-discipline: to go to bed early, and get up in time to make coffee at home.<\/p>\n<p>Financial literacy education tries to remove that last obstacle, self-discipline, by lecturing people about the virtues of managing money and debt wisely. But, for the most part, it does not work. As Carleton University economist Saul Schwartz, <a href=\"http:\/\/irpp.org\/research-studies\/study-no12\/\" target=\"_blank\">puts it<\/a>: \u201cFinancial education might have some positive effects on financial outcomes, but they are modest at best.\u201d People are simply not very good at exercising self-restraint. When consumers have tap-enabled credit cards that make purchases painless, it is hard to resist the temptation to spend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frances Woolley says the various government attempts to cajole us into being more economically minded are mostly a waste of time and effort: November is financial literacy month. Canadians are being advised: Start with a budget. It is about as effective as declaring National Fat Shaming month, and advising Canadians: Start with a diet. Saving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25],"tags":[697],"class_list":["post-36216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","tag-budget"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9q8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36217,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36216\/revisions\/36217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}