Saif Sondon, 13, is a fairly typical teenage boy when it comes to money. The Egyptian, who is a pupil at Nord Anglia International School in Dubai, gets Dh500 a month from his parents, "and more if I earn it somewhere else or if I sell some of my stuff," he explains. "Sometimes I spend it on clothes, games, or going out. Clothes don’t have to be expensive, mid-range is fine – I’ll wait for the sales and then buy them. I don’t like to go shopping much because I don’t have all the money in the world to go shopping with. If I did, then I’d enjoy it more because I’d buy the expensive brands of trainers that I really want."
For the past five weeks, Saif has been attending an hour-long financial literacy course every Saturday morning, organised by the company Kids Finance Initiative. Classes are in two age groups; 9 to 11 and 12 to 14, and the first eight-week course, costing Dh640, is currently taking place at Uptown School, Jumeira Baccalaureate School and Dubai British School.
Saif claims that what he’s learnt during the course is already having an impact on his spending habits. "Before I used to spend money whenever I had it, but now I’m going to give 10 per cent to charity and then save the rest for my future. I could put it into a bank and it would double with interest, so in a few years there would be more money – or I could buy something for Dh1,000."
The brains behind the new initiative is Marilyn Pinto, a mum of two girls, ages eight and 10, who not­iced that although her daughters were thriving academically, they had "no clue" when it came to money. "I actually thought I’d teach my own children about fin­ance last summer, but it didn’t go too well because after two weeks I wanted a break myself, and it’s difficult when you’re teaching your own children. But I realised that if I found this gap in the school curriculum, other parents might be interested in teaching their children about these concepts too."
But Ms Pinto initially met with some resistance to the idea of teaching financial literacy to children, from fellow parents. "They understand the need for karate, ballet and other run-of-the-mill after-school activities, but financial literacy was a novel concept. They asked me ‘is that all maths?’ ‘Isn’t it too complicated?’ ‘My kids are innocent, do we have to expose them at this age?’ But I believe that the earlier we talk to kids the better. After all, advertisers are now actively targeting young children on soc­ial media, so it’s now even more important that they learn early on in life to question what is a ‘want’ and what is a ‘need’ when it comes to spending."
The eight-week course that Ms Pinto is running, which is taught using an activity-based curriculum from the American National Financial Educators Council, delves into much more than just handling pocket money. Topics range from budgeting, investing and managing debts, to entrepreneurship and charity.
"We are looking for kids to set goals, to realise that money is a means to an end," she explains. "We get them to identify what kind of lifestyle they would like, what are their dreams and why money is important to achieve their goals."

Source: The National