Prudent financial management practices among Malaysian youth: The moderating roles of financial education

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the roles of financial education (FE) as a moderator to financial attitude (FA), parental financial socialisation (PFS), and financial literacy (FL) to ensure the success of prudent financial management practices (PFMP) among Malaysian youth. The study was designed quantitatively and employed self-administered questionnaires, which were adopted from previous studies and distributed to 480 youths in Malaysia. The data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to test hypotheses of the study. The results showed FA, PFS and FL have significant and positive relationship with PFMP. However, as regards moderating interaction of FE, results showed that FE does not significantly moderate the relationship between FA, PFS and FL with PFMP. The results further highlighted serious concerns on the effectiveness of FE towards improving youth capability in managing their financial affairs prudently. This proved that mandated FE prior to graduation has less effect and does not lead to behavior changes among Malaysian youth. It shows the challenges faced by the country stakeholders to strengthen FE, enhance the effectiveness and encompass the right FE elements to ensure today's young Malaysians are able to apply what they learned in the classroom to their real life.