Financial education and the perception of prosperity among emerging adults

Emerging maturity is conceptualized as a distinct stage of life in industrialized countries and encompasses the third decade of life. At this stage, young people are facing decisions about the transition to adulthood. Autonomy and independence from parental support is one of the milestones of emerging maturity. There is not much research on the role of financial education in fulfilling this development task. This study investigates how the level of financial education shapes the perception of prosperity in emerging adult and helps to achieve financial autonomy. This study involved 103 emerging adults, first-year students at the Academy of Economic Studies, University of Bucharest, and Polytechnic University (average age 20.1, SD = 0.78). The study had a quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive, and inferential design. The results obtained show that: 1. the higher the level of financial education, the more intrinsic the perception of prosperity, 2. the higher the level of financial education, the higher the financial autonomy, 3. between the level of financial education and the profile of the graduated high school / academic choice relations are insignificant. For data collection, questionnaires were developed for which the internal consistency of the items was calculated, and this is valid for this stage of the research.