FIVE-YEAR-OLD Jessie Lo puzzles over her assignment, clearly in a quandary. If given some pocket money, how would she spend it? The quiz is part of her introduction to a four-week programme to teach children about money management.
Even if they're not weaning youngsters on motivational books such as Robert Kiyosaki's best-seller Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Hong Kong parents are increasingly embracing the notion of giving their children training in basic finance. Banks such as Standard Chartered are pitching in by offering holiday programmes for teenagers.
Jessie is the youngest of five children in a class run by chartered accountant Sophie Paine at her tuition centre a+b=3. She got the idea for running financial literacy classes for children after her six-year-old son kept pestering her for an expensive toy. 'I told him to wait until Christmas or his birthday, but he asked, 'Why don't you use your credit card?' So I realised that kids have all these misconceptions about money,' Paine says. 'Children think things paid by credit cards are free and a credit card isn't money.'
It's a basic course designed to teach children how to prioritise their spending. The course costs HK$800 for four one-hour sessions. 'Many grown-ups also don't have a clue where their money goes,' Paine says. That's why she's introduced a similar programme for adults.
Teresa Leung Hou-lam discovered through her eldest son, Theo, how children from well-off backgrounds can find it difficult to grasp the concept of budgeting.
She used to top up the 11-year-old's Octopus card to HK$200 at the start of each week to buy lunch at school, but he would invariably overspend his allowance on snacks. 'The temptation with Octopus is the vending machines accepts payment even when there isn't enough money on the card,' Leung says. 'Whenever I ask [Theo] how he used up all the money, he gets annoyed and refuses to discuss it.'