Since 2017, in order to encourage children to cultivate a healthy approach to household finance, and to reduce financial pressures on the less well-off households, the Pearl S. Buck Foundation and Citibank have been teaching adults financial prudence. Through these courses, parents learn how to explore financial prudence with their children through games.
Yesterday, the Pearl S. Buck Foundation announced the achievements of the program from the previous three years. Of a total of 118 groups of parents and children, 98.7 percent had demonstrated an improvement in financial responsibility, 97.9 percent had developed the habit of saving money and 97 percent were able to apply the ability to compare prices that they had learned in class to their everyday lives.
In addition, 91.1 percent of students, having previously been reluctant to teach their children about household finances, had started discussing money issues with members of their family, enabling children to reduce unnecessary expenditures.
Photo courtesy of Citibank, Taiwan
“Citibank has been promoting inclusive finance throughout the world for almost 15 years, investing around US$2.25 million, helping over 25,000 people establish proper financial sense and prudence. In Taiwan, Citibank has been working with the Pearl S. Buck Foundation for almost seven years, and has been committed to assisting new immigrant households to get out of poverty, working with over 5,000 individuals and helping them learn how to make ends meet,” Citi Taiwan chairman Paulus Mok (莫兆鴻) said.
The Pearl S. Buck Foundation has found that new immigrants and parents in poor households working labor-intensive jobs with long working hours often do not have the time they would ideally like to spend with their children, and end up relying on compensating them in material ways.
However, buying their children dolls, watches or designer shoes has several detrimental effects, not least making them unable to differentiate between essential and luxury items and risking households falling into financial debt. As children come to expect more, and parents are increasingly unable to meet their demands, a distance emerges between parents and children, and children are unable to understand how financial pressures in the family affect the decisions their parents make. This is why the foundation wants to promote the learning of principles of financial prudence, including giving a fixed allowance at regular times, teaching how to clearly distinguish between needs and wants, and exploring ways to earn money while also limiting expenditure.
“Xiaogang” from Vietnam and her daughter started the financial prudence course in 2017 and a year later, at the young age of 10, her daughter was receiving a fixed allowance at regular times and had already begun applying the principles that she had learned during her classes of saving up for things, putting her money into a post office account. With the money she had left over she had learned to distinguish between what she needed and what she wanted. Her goal is to be able to buy her own laptop computer when she grows up.
A-Xia from China and her daughter Ting-ting started attending the classes and soon began discussing money-related issues together through practical activities. For example, they would go to the local market to buy things, and would discuss whether something was necessary or just something that would be nice to have. Over time they were able to cultivate good spending habits.
Last year, single-parent A-Chien, after taking a course in recording expenditures, learned how to teach his child ways to save money and is now bringing Hsiao Chih, who is in the second grade, to class. A-Chien said that after Hsiao Chih started taking the class he told his sister that she should start recording her expenditures, too. Through price comparison and cooking do-it-yourself activities, the family learned how to go online for recipes when they want to eat something, and A-Chien would give the children a budget with which to buy ingredients and then make the food at home as a way to save money. They would also make more than they needed so that they could sell it to classmates. Through this process, they also learned how to set price levels.
Yu Ying-fu, the foundation’s chairman, said: “Financial prudence is not just something for adults, it is our wish that parents will guide their children from a young age to cultivate the proper approach to money, so that the finances of the household as a whole can improve. Next year, we will be consolidating all of the ideas from the course and creating a board game for poor families, and will be inviting even more people to learn about financial prudence through playing games together, to continue developing sound financial prudence.”
The Pearl S. Buck Foundation will continue promoting the financial prudence for families courses to help new immigrants and poor households, and next year will open a special board game workshop to attract more partners into financial prudence education.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
INTIMIDATION: In addition to the likely military drills near Taiwan, China has also been waging a disinformation campaign to sow division between Taiwan and the US Beijing is poised to encircle Taiwan proper in military exercise “Joint Sword-2024C,” starting today or tomorrow, as President William Lai (賴清德) returns from his visit to diplomatic allies in the Pacific, a national security official said yesterday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said that multiple intelligence sources showed that China is “highly likely” to launch new drills around Taiwan. Although the drills’ scale is unknown, there is little doubt that they are part of the military activities China initiated before Lai’s departure, they said. Beijing at the same time is conducting information warfare by fanning skepticism of the US and
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan during US president-elect Donald Trump’s time in office, Taiwanese and foreign academics said on Friday. Trump is set to begin his second term early next year. Xi’s ambition to establish China as a “true world power” has intensified over the years, but he would not initiate an invasion of Taiwan “in the near future,” as his top priority is to maintain the regime and his power, not unification, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University distinguished visiting professor and contemporary Chinese politics expert Akio Takahara said. Takahara made the comment at a
DEFENSE: This month’s shipment of 38 modern M1A2T tanks would begin to replace the US-made M60A3 and indigenous CM11 tanks, whose designs date to the 1980s The M1A2T tanks that Taiwan expects to take delivery of later this month are to spark a “qualitative leap” in the operational capabilities of the nation’s armored forces, a retired general told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview published yesterday. On Tuesday, the army in a statement said it anticipates receiving the first batch of 38 M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks from the US, out of 108 tanks ordered, in the coming weeks. The M1 Abrams main battle tank is a generation ahead of the Taiwanese army’s US-made M60A3 and indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have
RSS