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How the UAE can improve its financial literacy Financial literacy is the awareness of how money functions and the capacity to handle one's finances successfully. While it is not a new idea, it is a completely recent phrase frequently used in the UAE. Why is this so? The reason, it appears, is that we are a not a financially knowledgeable nation. This can be clearly gleaned from our amount of debt, which constantly increases. In spite of the fact that the Central Bank introduces more rigorous qualifications for individual lending in 2011, banks are still allowed to grant loans of up to 20 times a person's monthly wage, with installments not to go above 50 per cent of monthly wage. The worth of personal debts in the country rose by 3.8 per cent to Dh270.7 billion between January and May this year alone, according to the Central Bank. That sum is over and above the Dh8.8 billion increase in individual loans reported during 2012. In addition, a survey by The National Family Status Observatory in 2012 revealed that about 60 per cent of Emirati families disbursed about one fourth of their monthly earnings repaying loans from credit cards and individual loans. Those figures are excessively high, says Keren Bobker, the financial counselor who writes The National's "On Your Side" column. "A major fraction of the population has total monthly loan obligations that surpass their income," she says. "Inescapably, this will end up in defaulting on payments and other dire consequences." So why is the UAE exceedingly financially uninformed? "Many factors can explain this predicament," Ms Bobker says. "These comprise having to handle financial products in a second language; absence of transparency in terms of many financial products and services; lack of help from banks, and excessive hard selling which are improper." Having debts has been embedded into the culture, she says. "So many citizens here simply believe that having large uncollateralized