Money Management Skills among the Youth in Mumbai

The financial preparedness of our nation's youth is essential to their wellbeing and of vital importance to our country's economic future. A person having the right financial knowledge and understanding will be in a position to survive through any sort of difficult times and will be in a better position to overcome the adverse effects of global depressions and meltdowns. It is the need of the hour today, to increase financial literacy and awareness especially among the youth. The result of the 50-questions questionnaire survey reveals that the youth of Mumbai city's knowledge of important financial concepts is not satisfactory. To probe further how well equipped the youth population in Mumbai is to make financial decisions, the researcher did a more detailed analysis. This piece of primary research tries to probe into the level of financial literacy among the youth in Mumbai. The actual fieldwork was conducted from April to November 2011. The survey was administered through face-to-face interviews at the respondents’ place of work, residence or study. The quality and consistency of the survey was further assessed using Cronbach's alpha. The reliability of the 50-questions survey is 0.78. The large Cronbach alpha indicates that the questionnaire is reliable, which further increases its validity.