November is Financial Literacy Month, and the Carleton Awards Office is hosting a number of events designed to help students get informed about their finances.
Throughout the month, the Awards Office will be putting on events such as budgeting workshops and debt and credit management seminars, as well as social media contests.
Financial Literacy Month is a nation-wide event co-ordinated by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC).
“[Being financially literate] means to have the knowledge, the skills, and the confidence to make financial decisions that are appropriate for your own needs,” said Natasha Nystrom, the media relation’s officer for the FCAC.
Despite it being in its fifth year, this is only the second year Carleton is officially participating in Financial Literacy Month.
Mark Robinson, financial aid manager at Carleton, said it’s important for students to be financially literate.
“To the same extent that you wouldn’t want to go through life illiterate, you wouldn’t want to go through life . . . financially illiterate either,” he said.
The main event was a special lecture on Nov. 10 featuring Rob Carrick, the Globe and Mail’s personal finance and investing columnist; and Roma Luciw, the Globe’s personal finance editor.
“These are skills that are going to be almost even more important after school,” Robinson said. “But if you can start practicing them now . . . It’s going to help students directly.”
“They’re going to learn their lessons one way or another, better to learn them now than later,” he added.
“I think it’s so important for everybody, because finances, you can’t avoid it,” said Abion Osman, a fourth-year humanities student. “You’re going to make money, you’re going to lose money and you have to know where it’s going.”
Robinson admits the biggest challenge is making the month interesting to students.
“The challenge is making that type of content . . . interesting and appealing to get people to turn [out], and to get them to take something away,” he said.
“Students get a bad rep sometimes —‘oh, they’re not financially prepared.’ Well, who is?” Robinson said. “Everybody has to learn at some point, it’s not something that you learn when you’re 10.”
