A Descriptive Study on Poor Financial Management Behaviour Among Malaysia University Students

The issue of lack of funds among university students has been on the rise for years. One of the reasons is that students lack financial knowledge, which contributes to the failure of financial behaviour through excessive spending and accumulated debt.  This research descriptively explored the poor financial management behaviour among university students. It is a quantitative research approach that collects data through questionnaires distributed in Google Forms. The survey used convenience sampling involving 170 university students to gather specific insights about their financial management behaviours. The data was analysed using the IBM SPSS version 29.0. to obtain frequency, percentage and mean. The output indicated that the most influential reasons for poor financial management behaviour among university students are keeping up with the spending habits of their peers and spending money on things they cannot afford. Despite these reasons, the students understand the importance of setting financial goals and adjusting their goal-setting to manage their money better. These findings could suggest for universities to develop ad-hoc programs that promote financial management and provide support for students to achieve responsible financial spending. It is also recommended that the university provide counselling services for students who face financial stress and organise programs to enhance students’ literacy with basic financial terms and concepts such as savings, debts, budgeting management and investment. Vice versa, the students could gain knowledge about financial management to improve financial behaviour. It is suggested for future research; the sample can be expanded to wider diversified respondents to represent a larger scope.