Abstract:

Besides the development of their professional competencies, students need character formation. One particular aspect is financial wisdom. Students have not always known how to spend money. Nowadays there are more and more opportunities and more and more shopping centers both physically (nearby university campuses) and online where they are tempted to spend. This is not intrinsically bad, but part of our responsibility as mentors and parents is to help them mature. Some are thoughtful and when they receive the scholarship, the parental help or the salary, they manage it so that they know exactly where, as well as what they will consume on, but most are not. When getting the money, most of them spend on all kind of less priority needs. Many times, the moment of financial evaluation is already too late.

The consequences of lacking financial wisdom have a negative impact not only upon the students and their families, but also upon the education system and in the end upon the whole society: some of the students leave school and many scholarly articles present this problem as one of the main reason for juvenile delinquency. Most of them remain for the rest of their lives with less education, others go into burdensome debt. Therefore, learning financial wisdom is a key skill that has to get the attention of colleges. The best content is to learn through a serious game.

This paper presents a solution: “iMoney Manager” – a mobile application which is appealing to the youth. The environment they live in is such that every individual is required to always have a mobile phone with him/her. The money management application is ready to manage the balance sheet and provide in depth analysis so the student can understand his vulnerabilities and strengths and change his behavior to be thoughtful and disciplined in this regard.

Keywords:

Student, money management, financial accountability, serious games.