Üliõpilaste rahakasutus ja rahaga seotud hoiakud

Date

2011

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Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

The bachelor´s thesis at hand aims to describe young people´s concepts of money, and media consumption habits and how they are linked. In my work I also focused on young people´s dream of the future, including career aspirations, dreams of habitats, dream family models and wage numbers. To understand student´s trains of thoughts I have identified what kind of habits and attitudes were taken from a home environment to an independent life and whether they have influenced money related decisions so far. In the first half of this issue I have pointed out theoretical approaches connected to the topic that I issued in this work. I have pointed out differences between generations and how they affect children´s and parents´ understandings about future decisions and concepts of money. Also I have defined more specifically the vision of future and how it is related to young people´s attitudes and behaviors towards money. I have also pointed out different aspects of media consumption habits discussing why young people are more or less interested in certain topics. It appeared that money attitudes memorized and learned from the family circle have influenced young people the most in their decisions and determined their attitudes towards money and money related news. Parents are considered to be trustworthy and good advise givers in money related topics. Certain amount of influence also derives from friends, but in this research this aspect is rather not that important. In the bachelor thesis I conducted nine in-depth interviews with students in the ages of 21 to 26. The work is constructed on quotes from interviews and on conclusions based on them. I have also analyzed collages prepared by respondents and drawings, which gave a better overview of young people´s attitudes towards money and understandings. In addition to interview questions I have also used creative assignments (collage about the future, drawing about the Estonian media in different periods of time) and articles from newspapers that respondents read and analyzed. I find that to understand better young people´s media consumption habits I could also have investigated parents´ media consumptions and what were the main issues when living together with children. There is a reason to believe that domestic habits have influenced young people´s preferences strongly, although college education also plays an independent role there. Analyzing media consumption habits, it appeared that mostly people don´t delve into news that are not personally related to the reader or that does not produce entertaining interest. People seek something that would create emotions in readers and do not need excessive aggravation. People who study economics in college and relate more to it, are also more interested in economical news and now the topics better. In a creative exercise economy students´ knowledge appeared to be better when they had to think about the time before and after recession in Estonia. They also knew the correct terms talking about the news they remembered. Young people who were rather distant from economical studies did not describe the news contents so well. From the results of this thesis it is possible to say that today´s young people at the ages of 21 to 26 financial educations is not all that good as it could be. That can be shown by deficient knowledge in what concerns economical terms and a very little interest towards economical news. I believe that when economical studies apply to schools more completely and young people can learn about economics already in elementary school and they learn to associate it to real everyday life, then interest rises.

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