School children are being taught how to understand the world of money, with the help of board games and interactive classroom budgeting sessions.
New Zealanders' level of financial literacy has been called into question recently, after investors in some of the company's largest listed firms were duped into selling shares to the notorious share buyer Bernard Whimp.
The share offers, one of which was labelled as misleading by the High Court, left hundreds of investors out of pocket.
Commerce Minister Simon Power warned that the prevalence of 'low ball' share offers show financial literacy is an area that needs attention.
So, it's been decided to move the Retirement Commissioner's portfolio from the Ministry of Social Development to the Commerce Commission from July, in an effort to improve financial literacy among mum and dad investors.
Work on financial literacy is already being carried out at schools.
Siale Tunoka, from ASB, has been visiting schools for more than a year, and says he always gets a good response from the children.
Teacher Maryanne Manuyhe organised with the bank to get financial literacy classes started, after her students at Viscount Primary School in Mangere, Auckland did a project on the high levels of student loan and national debt.
Ms Manuyhe says many children at the school, which serves a low-income community, have little idea where money comes from, and if they don't have concepts of savings or interest repayments, it will set them up to fail.
In Wellington, the Reserve Bank is using a board game 'Skint to Mint' to hone secondary school student's financial literacy skills.
Sara Arhaim, an adviser at the central bank, has been developing the game with the Young Enterprise Trust.
The initial aim of the game was to teach secondary school students about credit ratings, but Ms Arhaim says it is now used to teach a variety of skills in maths, economics, accounting and social studies classes.
She says the board game is now used by more than a hundred schools across the country.
'More needed in curriculum'
The Retirement Commission believes more needs to be done within the curriculum itself.
In 2005 the Commission, with the help of the Young Enterprise Trust, developed a curriculum and ran it as a trial in a number of schools.
It has put the resources for teachers and students on its website.
In 2009 the ministry of education agreed to fund the scheme, but this was put on hold a few months later due to budget cuts.
Retirement Commissioner Diana Crossan says she would like to see more financial litteracy classes taught by school teachers, not banks.
