As a financial educator I was pleased to see that the recent budget introduced a plan to raise the level of financial literacy among consumers.  The plan is to spend $5 million on a task force made up of representatives from the business, education, volunteer and academic communities to make recommendations to the finance minister on a “cohesive national strategy on financial literacy”.

But is this really necessary?  Judging by the number of personal finance books I saw at Chapters last week and the amount of information that is available online and on TV, it’s hard to believe that we all aren’t financial gurus and that I still have a job as a financial planner.

Turns out I have my work cut out for me for a while yet.  A few weeks ago, I ran a financial planning workshop for a group of 40 professional women and I asked for a show of hands on who really understood what they were invested in.  Only three people fessed up to financial geekdom, which meant that over 90% of the women in the room had little or no knowledge of how their money was invested.

A study was done a few years ago by a US insurance firm that came up with the same statistic  — 90% of women lacked confidence in their ability to make good financial decisions.  While the numbers aren’t quite as grim for men, they aren’t much better.

If anyone from the task force asks for my input (and I’d be glad to take their call), I will say that financial literacy doesn’t happen overnight, and writing more books or putting up more websites won’t cut it, especially if the information is provided by companies that are using education to sell financial products.

Financial literacy is a skill that takes time to develop and it needs to be taught in schools, at home and through independent third parties.  It will take programs that help people discern what information is relevant to them, what questions they need to ask financial service providers and how to integrate this information into meaningful life choices.

Otherwise it’s just another $5 million investment gone bad. — Karin Mizgala

Karin Mizgala is a Vancouver-based fee-for-service financial planner with an MBA and a degree in psychology. She’s the co-founder of the Women’s Financial Learning Centre.