ExCEL-2: COMPFAIR'21 - Financial Literacy

Financial Literacy was held by PERSAKA UTM in conjunction with COMPFAIR’ 21 as part of a 4-day long event. It was held on the 23^rd of November 2021 at 8:30 pm. The platform used was Facebook live at PERSAKA UTM. The speaker of the day was Miss Shabana Binte Mahmoodul Hasan. The graduate attributes in this program are thinking skills, adaptability, and entrepreneurship skills. After the emcee had been introduced to our speaker, it was the sharing session by Miss Shabana. In her sharing, it was said that “The No. 1 problem in today’s generation and the economy is the lack of Financial Literacy”. About 65% of Malaysians do not know about financial literacy while Malaysian aged 25 to 44 years old had increased the rate of bankruptcy due to the overspending on the credit cards. There are five basic things to understand about financial literacy, that is, the basic concepts of Finance, tools that can be used for money growth, saving versus spending, emergency fund, and financial activities that a Muslim can or cannot do. Finance is defined as the management of money which includes activities such as investing, borrowing, lending, budget planning, and forecasting. It is also a broad term that describes activities associated with banking, leverage of debit, credit, capital markets, money, and investment. In the banking industry, we have conventional banks and Islamic banks. Both of which operate based on different principles and policies. The same goes for insurance as it is also divided into normal insurance and takaful. The reason that financial literacy is important is that we had learned tough lessons from the outbreak of COVID-19.  An emergency fund is a must in case of unpredictable outbreaks such as the pandemic. After the sharing session by Miss Shabana, we had a Quizizz session to test out how much we had learned during her sharing session. After the Quizizz session, the event had come to an end at about 10:07 pm.

This event helps everyone in a way and how we see financial literacy. In the pandemic case, money should always be spent wisely in case of sudden needs. Before this event, although I know about savings but still, I only had very little knowledge about the broad term of financial literacy. With the outbreak of the pandemic and this sharing of financial literacy, I gained some insights on how to save money and why we should save money. Other than that, I have also learned there are two different types of Finance in Malaysia, most notably is being divided into two types, conventional Finance, and Islamic Finance. Both have the same goal, but the method of operations and policies are not the same. The terms and conditions of one Finance should be read carefully and ask any questions if you have doubt about it. Last but not least, the challenges ahead of me is still many as I only learned the tip of an iceberg. I have to continue self-study on Financial Literacy if I want to know more about investments and stuff.