Financial literacy. The domino principle.

When I was growing up, the buzz word was "computer literate". I remember I liked how this sounded on my cv. In a country in which (at the time), PCs where just starting to take over the local made HC, being computer literate was making you belong to a very select community.

Time has flied and now everyone knows how to use a computer - even my 81 years old gramda has a clue, even though her eyesight prevents her from using a computer screen for anything but watching photos (many thanks for the inventors of digital cameras!).

So, when I was growing up, computers where a new thing, the Internet was still in it's infancy... everything was new for everyone. I have just came across an article about an initiative of the European Commission for promoting financial education among young people. And, as an MEP pointed out, we can't speak of financial education when we have not reached the financial literacy threshold. I'm having a dilemma here... Computers arrived in the world much later than financial services. Even the inflation has been around for longer than computers, even though it might not have been named yet. So how come we became so quickly Internet addicts and we still don't know how to - not invest our money wisely - but, at least, not loose them in a very stupid way? How come the credit card has become the best friend? The sub-prime crisis in US has, as root cause, the lack of financial awareness of the common people. So now the European Commission is investing 1 million euros trying to prevent a similar phenomenon in Europe - well, good luck! However, one reason why western Europe might not reach such a critical point as US is the European way of life: more relaxed and not so much centred around money (different story for Eastern Europe, but maybe we'll hit an accelerated growing up phase and catch up with the 'old Europe').

So, more questions than answers here... And Marie starts to cry and announce her feeding time...