Improving Financial Literacy of Undergraduate Students with Supplementary Financial Lessons: A Case of Practical Economics for Daily Life

Financial literacy is a vital issue since individuals with financial literacy are able to manage their finance allowing them to live their lives stably with no worry about financial problems. Normally, courses provided by Department of Economics should include lessons to develop financial literacy of undergraduate students. This study aimed to compare financial behavior, attitude and financial literacy of 155 students who registered the Practical Economics for Daily Life Course before and after taking the course. The research instruments were a questionnaire and a test. The results revealed that the students increased their financial behavior and attitude after taking supplementary financial lessons in the course. Moreover, the result of the test about financial literary showed that the students gained significantly higher mean score after taking the custom-made financial lessons. However, the posttest score, despite the fact that it was higher than the pre-test score, was considered not quite very high. The researcher suggests integrating more financial knowledge content in many lessons of the course or if possible, the department should consider having a separate course about financial literacy in the curriculum of the program.