Financial Literacy in Young Adults
The Project
The purpose of our study was to discover how young adults manage their day to day finances, along with how these choices can affect them emotionally. The reason we chose this topic is that we felt it hit close to home with all members being in their early to mid-twenties, realizing we all have different views on spending and saving.
Category: School Project
Duration: 1 month
Team: Christopher Browne, Omar Fakhry, Trisha Naik, Ellixs Tulagan
Tools:Google Docs, Journals, Sticky Notes
My Role
- Conducted Screener Interviews with Participants.
- Interviewed Participants every 2 days.
- Created affinity diagrams based on data gathered from the diary study.
- Analyzed findings from the study with my team members and produced a report of our learning.
How It All Began
The team then decided to use a Diary Study to help us to collect information with Humber students in their twenties, who became the main focus of our study. So why a Diary Study? A Diary Study would help guide our participants to think about their environments in different ways, helping us discover both the challenges and opportunities our participants face.
Steps and Process
Choosing a Theme
Step 1: The team chose Financial Literacy in Young Adults as our topic of study.
Gathering Participants
Step2: Participants were gathered from Humber College since they were the best participants available and closest to our target demographic (young adults 22-28). Screeners were then sent out to collect simple data and eliminating those who didn’t meet the requirements.
Created Diary Study Questions
Step 3: Next came the diary study, the team created a set of questions which focused on understanding the participants daily spending habits along with the emotions behind their choices.
Conducted the Diary Study
Step 4: We sent the questions out to participants getting the ball rolling, with them being sent three times a day every two days over a week. When the study was complete, we collected the data and came together to analyze our findings making interesting discoveries.
Our Findings
From our screener questions, we learned that not one of our participants currently uses budgeting apps to keep track of their finances, this was especially surprising since we live in such a technology-reliant society.
From there, we also noticed that even though they don't use any kind of app to keep track of their finances, 75% of our participants still track their spending and saving regularly. Showing they still have an interest in their finances but, each has their way of going about it
Key Insights
Feelings Towards Money
Spending Habits for Needs
Spending Habits for Wants
Income
Budgeting
From what we learned we divided our findings into 5 themes we noticed
For this theme, we found there were common feelings of regret and annoyance when the participants had unexplained expenses, this led to them having feelings of stress.
Alternatively, when they were paid or received money as a gift they would feel more content, less negative about money, and be more willing to spend.
When it came to spending habits, we noticed that they were more willing to spend money on their health or groceries without feelings of regret.
They often prioritized their needs over wants, which usually included material items such as electronic items or clothes which they said were nice but were not important if they couldn't afford them.
We observed that our participants were more willing to spend money on their “wants” if those items were on discount, this was especially so for sales such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Their rationale was since items were on sale, it was okay for them to spend the extra money and purchase them because they wouldn't know if they would go on sale again in the future.
With income, we noticed major differences between our international and domestic students, with the international students, having to work to support themselves.
Alternatively, the domestic students had support from their parents who often paid for the majority of their expenses and so any money they made from their jobs was meant for personal expenses such as socializing and purchasing food or clothes.
For budgeting, we realized our participants approached budgeting in a variety of ways, with some succeeding and others stating they never got around to it.
We noticed that budgeting is important to all of our students, with the goal of tracking and managing their income being a serious hurdle for them.
However, they are continuously striving to learn to better manage themselves and their spending habits.
Things to take away
- Every participant's situation is different the challenges international students may face a domestic student might not and vice versa.
- In the end, we came to realize our participant’s spending habits differed based on their situations and circumstances.
- Our participants wanted to save but sometimes a lack of motivation or unexpected commitments got in the way.
- They do understand the importance of budgeting and are willing to develop better habits concerning spending and saving in the future.
