No, fear not . I ‘m not going to talk about how important financial education is in a country that thinks that talking about money is bad manners. that thinks that talking about money is bad manners, who thinks that finance is so complicated that you will never understand it , or that to invest you need to be a great stock market expert or, worse, an unscrupulous shark, worse , an unscrupulous shark. No. Financial education was discussed at length last week on the occasion of last week’s celebration- in style – of the in style – of the week of the idem, and all the media, all the banks spoke, all the financial institutions, foundations, public and private institutions, companies, youtubers and other social fauna that joined in the celebration of what, contradictorily, does not exist, youtubers and more social fauna that joined the celebration of what, contradictorily, does not exist. Even in comma we have talked about this issue too. Because if there is something missing in our country, it is education about capital. Just one fact: 44% of the population does not understand fundamental concepts such as interest, inflation or risk diversification. Or another one, Did you know that more than 35% of workers don’t understand their payslip? To illustrate this post I went looking for links to different existing initiatives – manuals, contents, events, debates… – but there is such an avalanche that I find it difficult to decide between so much homogeneity. They all say and do the same thing. However, and look what a coincidence, in no case has there been any discussion of what communication could do in this respect. So I’m taking advantage of the loophole and sneaking in here in the spirit, the only one, to change approaches. Butwhat are these approaches? These are some of the ones that come to mind, but I’m sure there are many more. Maybe you would like to suggest them. We areopen.
One mouth and two ears
Although it might seem that I have lost my temper by talking about human physiognomy in an article on finance, this statement is so relevant that it should not come as a surprise. There is a phrase going around, by an unknown author, which states that “we have one mouth and two ears, to speak half as much and listen twice as much”. I believe that this is the main key to how financial education has been tackled in Spain. An infinite number of entities – whatever their nature – talking non-stop, spewing out recommendations, concepts, manuals, definitions… This is how we have reached a context of thematic infoxication such as the one we are experiencing -which is especially evident this week of celebration- and with the lowest reading rates (books aside) in history (images win by a landslide). Hundreds of thousands of contents trying to enlighten supposedly financially ignorant people who do not know that they are ignorant or, what is more serious, who do not care to know it. What’s more, they don’t care if they are because they haven’t even stopped to think about it. They just talk, but who listens? What do they say? What do they want? What do they feel? What are they urged to do? What are they afraid of? Contributing content – sometimes good, sometimes surprisingly mediocre – to a lake where nobody is going to go fishing, seems to me to be a kind of self-deception, a way of covering the dossier of “my contribution to the issue” without stopping to think whether it is really worth the effort and the resources devoted to it.
The pupil decides
“When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears”. This obvious but overlooked statement is attributed to Socrates, a master among masters, who reflects very faithfully the consequences of what I said in the previous point. There is no point in teaching if there is no one who wants to learn. It is the closest thing to preaching in the desert or sowing in cement. In order for all this enormous informative effort to have a real and tangible return, we must provoke the student’s thirst for knowledge; create the need to equip him/her with a tool that will allow him/her, above all, to be free. Because… freedom is not to be trifled with.
Healing the relationship with money
In order for the learner to decide that he/she really needs the learning to achieve that freedom, we must first heal the relationship we have with money. Not for nothing , many of the courses on self-knowledge and personal personal growth courses that are gaining more and more followers every day, include this approach as an essential step in the management of our own lives. How is it possible that, on the path of self-knowledge, of full awareness of the self, of meditation, of connection with the energy around us, of connection with the energy around us, of connection with the energy around us, of connection with the energy around us? of connection with the energy that surrounds us? money is positioned as a key element to be taken into account? It is not nonsense. Many people have an unhealthy relationship with money, for different reasons, and it weighs on their daily lives.
Cultural change
But… where does this bad relationship with money come from? In Spain this is a purely cultural issue. You don’t talk about money, it’s bad manners. Full stop. But why? For several reasons. One of them is that it is part of our history. Until 1975, 50% of the Spanish population – women – could not open a bank account without the authorisation of their father, brother or husband. So why do we need to know what this is all about? We are talking about the fact that, less than 50 years ago, women were considered financial minors, so it should come as no surprise that women today possess fewer financial skills than men. Fifty years is too short a time to free ourselves from such a deep-rooted stigma. Another reason comes from the Christian culture that considers possessiveness and attachment to money as a form of slavery and a false security that prevents us from bearing fruit for God. Added to this is the individual and collective belief that everything to do with economic concepts is the sole and exclusive patrimony of the expert, as if it could not be understood – due to its very high complexity – by the rest of mortals. And finally, we must not forget that the control of capital is a form of control over people, especially the most vulnerable, including women. How can we change the mentality of an entire country? How can we break with these beliefs imposed by history and tradition? How can we implement new criteria for approaching money?
Yes, let’s talk about communication
Against this backdrop, there is an urgent need to take an approach that does not undermine all the current efforts to disseminate information, but rather to ensure that these efforts are properly grounded and with the sole objective of winning for everyone. Content may be very useful, but let’s start by creating the need to use it through communication campaigns based on facts, realities and the ways in which different audiences interact. Let us imagine, foresee and design a work aimed at changing culture, beliefs and self-limitations in order to open up a huge field of possibilities hitherto unimaginable. And here, creativity, channels and audiences come into play, since perception, knowledge and casuistry are as diverse as the target audiences we are addressing. Although year after year it is evident that young Spaniards are below the European average in financial concepts, paradoxically, never before have they been so exposed to topics related to finance, mainly due to the enormous number of gurus and influencers who introduce them to this territory from social networks, but without control or educational coherence and more aimed at achieving the big bucks and getting rich quick. However, it is curious that, despite this lack of knowledge, young people are clear about a concept through which it would be very easy to hook them on the need and the possibility: profitability. It is not for nothing that they use it on a daily basis in their language when they declare “it pays” or “it doesn’t pay” any action, initiative, comment, plan, etc. Wouldn’t it be a good entry point?
Getting the right channel
But young people are not in offices, nor in institutional galas, nor in governmental cabinets. We have to go out onto the streets, go to the channels where they talk and talk to each other. Therefore, campaigns cannot therefore be directed at covering the dossier for the institutions that institutions that finance them , but to the objective that provokes them. We must begin to change the approach, understanding what the need is and what the context is in which it develops. We can no longer ignore the needs and circumstances of the audiences we want to of the audiences to whom all these initiatives are intended to address initiatives and continue to speak from the pulpit of the superiority of the superiority that comes from knowledge and the institution we represent.
Change the focus.
This is all about creativity. Right now, and before delving into the content, we need to get down to earth and connect. Breaking taboos, changing heads, provoking this cultural change that is so deeply rooted because it belongs to the past and empowering people – young people, women, the elderly… – so that they understand that part of their freedom is 100% linked to understanding what money is all about, that it is not bad and that it is not difficult. And it is not a question of heroically championing it alone, but of creating an immense force that unites each and every one of the initiatives that exist at the moment in order to achieve – it is time! that all the effort is worthwhile – once and for all. And this is only possible if the current focus on financial education is drastically changed.
