Financial literacy through pictures

Whether urban, home, digital or rural, our landscapes are filled with ads: pictures nudging us to buy this, or use that service: lots of colours, a striking picture and a snappy slogan. Even if we don’t read them, our eyesight catches them and processes them. Didn’t our ancestors use their vision to detect dangerous animals and poisonous food?

By using spreadsheets and black and white wordy explanations, financial education makes it hard for us to process and remember what to do in a flash… in front of a shop window for instance or browsing an online shop. To address this mismatch between ads and education, a+b=3 is launching a series of visuals and short videos – using the same communication tool as ads: colours, pictures and a snappy slogan, easy to remember when we need it most, out shopping.

This series consists of three parts:

  1. Beware of debts: there is a huge gap between colourful ads to buy on credit or use a credit card… while warnings are always in small black letters – written by credit institutions that cannot be fully neutral as they are the credit sellers. This series consists of colourful ads on how interest grows (note: no calculation there, just pictures,- what matters is the understanding of compound interest, not the detailed maths behind it), think twice how to pay back BEFORE borrowing, how debts eat up future income, why it matters to have a written agreement, etc…
  2. Think twice: don’t let others choose for you: these visuals appeal emotionally to each of us… to be more thoughtful on how we spend and envision our future.
  3. Money connects us: money is a social tool – these visuals go beyond the usual financial education messages on ‘spend less, save more’ and put them in a wider context: how our spending and saving impacts our families, communities, countries and the earth.

A fourth topic on microbusiness will be available mid-2015.

In three words and many pictures: beware, thoughtful and mindful.

These pictures are available for you to use (for free!). Contact us to get the link and more insights.

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