Abstract:
The interest in financial literacy has increased globally because it
enhances financial security, wealth creation and excellent portfolio choice for
the individual. The study was set up to investigate financial literacy and the
practice of saving and investment by public sector workers in the Ajumako
Enyan Essiam district of the Central region of Ghana.
Frequency distributions, percentage, contingency tables and bar charts
have been employed to show the results in the study conducted. Despite the
high financial literacy rate among the public sector workers in the district, this
is not reflective in savings and investment. There is need for more education
on financial literacy and application of the knowledge acquired. The result
indicates that over 95 percent of the respondents know what a personal budget
is. The respondents who prepared a monthly budgets were 72% whilst 28%
did not prepare budgets. In fact 52% of these workers who prepare budgets did
not follow it every month leading to 76.3% of the workers having their
incomes falling short of expenses.
Financial institutions should also develop attractive investment products
to encourage public sector workers to invest. Other sources of income
generating avenues should be exploited by those whose incomes can barely
cover expenses for the month. Education by the state and the financial
institutions should be stepped up for the workers to see the importance of
using budgets to control their expenses and most importantly its effect on
saving and investment.
