Why I teach financial literacy to young people

I have spent more than twenty years working with companies’ numbers: first as an auditor, then in due diligence, valuation and investing. One thing this work has taught me is that most of the problems you see on a balance sheet do not come from one big decision. They build up from small habits over the years.

Personal finance is no different. The difference is that companies have finance teams, auditors and boards. A young person usually has only themselves.

Where the problem starts

Working with young athletes at Max Potential, I have seen this up close. An athlete can earn a first income much earlier than most people their age, and meets contracts, sponsorship, tax and spending decisions early too. Yet they have usually never been taught how to manage that money.

The same is true for any young person receiving a first scholarship, a first salary or a first freelance fee. School teaches us what money is, but not how to live with it. I first created Paranın İlk Adımları (“Money’s First Steps”) for Max Potential athletes, and then began teaching it to young people outside sport who asked for it.

Why now?

The early twenties are the years when a financial life is set up. Habits have not yet hardened, mistakes are still small, and time, the most valuable financial asset, is plentiful. Small steps taken now make a very large difference later through the power of compounding. The same is true of bad habits.

And the risks a young person faces today are different from those my generation faced:

• the minimum-payment spiral on credit cards and the hidden weight of instalment purchases,
• status spending driven by social media and friends,
• influencers promising sure gains, and advertising dressed up as investment advice,
• the lure of crypto and leverage,
• online betting and in-game spending,
• subscriptions that quietly eat away at a budget,
• the belief that “I’ll earn it later anyway”.

The aim of the programme is not to frighten young people about these risks. It is to prepare them.

Knowledge is not enough; habits are needed

My starting point in building the programme was that financial literacy is not a talent for mathematics but a matter of habits and decision discipline. Most of us know the right thing to do, and don’t do it. So I built the programme on five principles:

1. Behaviour matters more than knowledge. The goal is to turn knowledge into habit.
2. Starting early is powerful. Small, early steps are worth more than big, late ones.
3. Systems beat willpower. Automatic saving always works better than saving that depends on motivation. A good system works on a bad day too.
4. Real life comes before theory. Every concept is tied to a decision a young person will actually make: instalments, subscriptions, crypto.
5. The aim is freedom, not restriction. Not banning spending, but being able to choose consciously.

In practice this comes down to a few simple habits. Setting aside savings as soon as income arrives, and living on the rest. Waiting forty-eight hours before a big purchase. Stopping to ask questions on hearing “guaranteed high returns” or “you have to decide now”. Actually filling in the budget, net worth and debt tables rather than keeping them in your head.

The line between education and advice

As someone who holds capital markets licences, I pay particular attention to this line. Paranın İlk Adımları is an education programme. It explains how investment instruments work, how risk relates to return, and what the red flags are. It does not tell anyone which share to buy or when to sell. Personalised investment advice is the job of authorised institutions and licensed professionals. Simply knowing that distinction is already a good start in protecting a young person from many of the traps on social media.

How the programme works

The programme has 16 chapters. It starts with core concepts, moves through budgeting, saving, banking, debt, investing, insurance and retirement, and ends with the psychology of money, careers and a personal financial plan. Each chapter closes with a quiz, and the programme ends with a 12-month development plan. It can be followed alone, in a group, or together with a mentor or parent.

The programme is free of charge. If you are interested as a young person, a family, a club or an organisation, you can reach me through the contact page.

The relationship a young person builds with a first salary, a first card or a first investment often becomes the relationship of the next twenty years. Being able to contribute, even a little, to getting that relationship right is one of the most meaningful things I do.