An important factor to increasing your financial literacy and awareness is to relate it back to your own personal situation.  Relating it to your experiences is a key way of maintaining the motivation and interest to learn.  Therefore, perhaps instead of starting with browsing financial dictionaries focus first on understanding your own finances and investments.

There are many places to start; your individual pension plan, your saving account, your employee pension plan, your mortgage or property investment.  Learn the financial jargon associated with these and try to understand the factors which affect these investments.  For instance, if you have a pension plan try and find out the names of the funds you are invested in and research these.  Or if you have savings in a bank account, read articles associated with banks, interest rates or ways to maximise your savings. The more you can relate financial understanding to your personal situation the greater your interest will be.

This approach holds true when reading the money and financial sections in papers too. National newspapers are a good place to start as they are generally impartial and are written specifically to interest the reader.  Start with areas of interest, whether it is property investments, the state of the economy, stock picks or country-specific news.  If you work in a large industry, say healthcare or manufacturing, you may know some companies in the articles thus piquing your interest even more.  If you don´t know any specific financial jargon then look it up but you will remember it much quicker if you can keep it in context.  After reading, try and analyse the article, what is it saying?  What could that mean to you, your friends, the world in general?  Critical thinking will make it clearer in your head and the next time you read a related article you will be able to expand on your previous view or opinion.

Finally, don´t get disheartened.  The world of finance and money will become clearer the more you focus on your own finances and the more you read and analyse.   And don´t forget there is always financial coaching to help you too.

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