Millennials Are Financially Literate, Smart To Look For Money

JAKARTA - A dynamic lifestyle coupled with the lack of financial management knowledge, makes millennials and gen z find it difficult to manage finances. Some millennials and gen z are also still difficult to manage their finances according to a priority scale. The success of managing their own finances is greatly determined by discipline in maintaining the consistency of a efficient and intelligent lifestyle.

Life is saving is able to prioritize needs above the wishes and manage the fulfillment of needs with quality things efficiently. Savings life does not mean reducing expenses so as not to pay attention to quality, but to regulate expenses according to needs and balanced with income. So that financial management will be better.

Moreover, the You Only Live Once (YOLO) and Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) phenomena are rife. This is also the biggest challenge for millennials and gen z in managing their finances. Head of the Department of Literacy, Financial Inclusion, and Communication of the Financial Services Authority (OJK), Aman Santosa assessed, financial literacy is an important thing so that millennials and gen z can now prioritize needs rather than wants.

This was stated by Aman in the Financial Literacy Roadshow activity with the theme Golden Indonesia Visi 2045: Millennials Lunar Finance, Looking for Money and Safe which was held by Infobank Digital in collaboration with the OJK and the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Indonesia (FEB UI) which was held at the FEB UI Auditorium, Depok, September 6.

"So in principle, if we like to buy what is not necessary, if we buy something that is not productive, be prepared not to buy the goods needed before," said Aman.

In financial management, he continued, millennials and gen z need to pay attention to important things in choosing financial products and services to manage their financial management. "Recognize the products, understand the features, benefits and risks, understand the rights and obligations as consumers, including the consumer protection mechanism," he said.

Furthermore, millennials and gen z also need to pay attention to what items are deemed important for needs before already making purchase transactions of these goods.

"The point is we want to say wisdom (wiseness) The second is to be careful before buying, before we understand that transaction is really what we need," said Aman.

The last thing that can be done in choosing financial products or services is related to the legality, whether the product or service is supervised by the OJK or not, and is legal or illegal. The legal point is licensed at the OJK, which is not legally licensed by the OJK, if not licensed, it is almost certain that it can be misleading," he explained.

Meanwhile, financial products registered with the OJK, are of course supervised and follow the rules of the game that must be obeyed so that consumers will be relatively safer. For this reason, he appealed, do not let millennials fall into illegal lending circles. He asked to be able to distinguish between legal and illegal loans in the midst of proliferating loans that mislead the public.

The millennial generation and gen z are indeed considered the most adaptive generation to the times. One of them is the trend of using paylaters to meet various necessities of life such as ordering food, fashion to travel agents. Moreover, recently millennials and gen z have been spoiled with access to the financial sector.

"Just imagine with a one click, they can do anything, such as ordering food to fashion products with a pay latter," added Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Indonesia (FEB UI) Teguh Dartanto.

He revealed that paylater services are currently available on various digital platforms providing convenience. Moreover, the registration process is relatively fast and the submission is easy. The point is that the paylater is made fun for the community. This is what causes this one service to be popular, including among millennials and gen z," he explained.

But on the one hand, excessive use of paylaters can backfire for users. Like a double-edged knife. Instead of wanting to make it easier for various necessities of life, it can actually entangle financial problems. We accidentally click on this, click on it but at the end of the month the debt has to be paid. If it can't be paid how?, "he explained.

For this reason, he warned young people to be wise in using paylater services. Do not cause financial problems in the future. The reason is, this can provide bad credit scores for users who are recorded in BI Checking or are now popular with the term Financial Information Service System (SLIK).

"If our names are already categorized as bad, of course it will be detrimental in the future, such as not being able to apply for a house mortgage and so on," he said.

Indonesia is currently one of the countries in the world that is enjoying the explosion of the number of productive age or commonly called a demographic bonus. This provides its own advantages for Indonesia in the availability of labor or human resources, which will have a positive impact on the consumption sector and the national economy.

However, the existing demographic bonus turned out to be under the shadow of the threat of illegal borrowing. Many loans take advantage of this demographic bonus by offering loan funds to young people, to meet the needs of young people who tend to be consumptive, but have minimal financial literacy. No doubt, many young people have bad credit scores and are subject to blacklists from credit applications.

Indonesia received extraordinary blessings, where this millennial generation has a portion of 51 percent of the total population, and will vote in the 2024 General Election. We can imagine the millennial generation in Indonesia as much as 69 million, gen z as much as 70 million, "explained Eko B. Supriyanto as Chairman of Infobank Media Group.

According to him, many of these millennials have entered the data on SLIK (Financial Information Service System) and were hit by a blacklist, because of the victims rather than borrowing. So that in the future, these millennials will no longer be able to get credit from banks due to being blacklisted. This situation, he continued, occurred not because of the intentionalness of the young people, but because of ignorance that borrowing from illegal loans has a big risk for the long term.

"Pinjalah untuk produktivitas, bukan untuk konsumtif. Apalagi, untuk konservasi. Itu berbahaya. Anak-anak muda ini akan menjadi uncana di 2045 kalau tidak diberikan dan akan terus bertambah terus," tegasnya.

Meanwhile, Bank Mandiri's Head of Macroeconomic & Financial Market Research, Dian Ayu Yustina, suggested that investment products suitable for millennials today are bonds, because they are ownership of securities which are certainly relatively safe.

" Bonds are one of the relatively safe investment alternatives, why? Because he is still income, he is a valuable letter ownership, debt securities that can be held until it is due, then coupons can be sold or can be traded before due, later you can get a capital gain," he said.

According to him, bonds are different from stock investments which rely heavily on stock price fluctuations, which follow the situation of the Indonesian and global economy.

"It could be that if we invest in stocks, the shares are bad, the companies are bad, the shares go down as soon as we take them, some of the money is lost, but if the bonds tend to be safer," he added.

Meanwhile, one of the types of bonds that are currently in great demand is government bonds, because government bonds are commonly called safe haven assets or assets that are relatively safe because they are owned directly by the government and of course these assets can be well maintained.

"Well, it also appears that government bond ownership by retail investors, individual investors are increasing sharply, and the government is also responding to this by issuing bonds that can be purchased by individual retail bonds, the issuance is more frequent," he explained.

There are still many parties who need to. have sufficient knowledge related to financial management. No doubt, this condition then becomes the cause of financial difficulties in someone. The irony is, many of them are young or productive.

Senior Analyst Panin Sekuritas, Aqil Triyadi, revealed that there are a number of errors in managing finances that are often made by the younger generation. These mistakes ultimately make financial conditions in the future more difficult. One of them is related to saving.

"Well, what is often an error here is that friends don't have savings accounts," said Aqil

Furthermore, he said that the younger generation should also have more than one savings account to facilitate financial management through function separation between one account and another.

So, my friends must have more than one savings. That's the first one. So, don't let the millennial generation now have the times, you don't have an account," he added.