FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SKILLS OF STUDENT UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Financial management defined as behavior and perceptions about how
financial is managed. For the present, student financial management refers to
the behavior and perceptions of how students manage their finances and handle
their money during studies. The aim of this study is to assess university
students’ financial management skills. Data were collected among Universiti
Utara Malaysia (UUM) students. The selection of this sample was students
with an age between 18 years old to 25 years old. The sample was selected
through the simple random sampling technique with the sample size of 114
respondents. Perceived financial management skills were measured using a
Likert scale from 1 (unskilled) to 5 (skilful) on 12 management related items:
daily expenses, debt, future needs, time, savings, use of education loan,
purpose of education loan, social interaction, stress, decision making, problem
solving and career planning. The data were analyzed by using t-tests and
Analyses of Variances (ANOVA) through Statistical Packages for Social
Sciences (SPSS) version 25. The scores for the financial management skills
were computed and the results revealed there was no gender difference in the
score. However, the female students showed a higher level of financial skills
than the males. Therefore, there are significant differences in the mean score
among ethnic groups, with Indian students scoring the lowest compared to
other ethnic groups.