Assessment on financial practices among teachers in the District of Bacuag, Division of Surigao Del Norte: Bases for Intervention

Good financial practices are the ability to make knowledgeable decisions and to take effective results regarding the expenditure and money management. According to the financial institutions, and also in the teaching community, most of the teachers are known to be regular creditors of banks and other financial institutions. Activities of the teachers are more in borrowing than savings and depositing money. This reputation is shared by the teachers assigned in the Bacuag District were researcher was previously connected. Thus, this is the motivation of the researcher to conduct this study. It employed quantitative descriptive research design using survey questionnaire as the mode of gathering data. Of the 164 teachers in the respondent school district, 88 were taken as samples through simple random sampling. Simple descriptive statistics like frequency count, percentage and weighted mean were utilized in the treatment of the data. Also, the one-sample t-test was introduced to determine whether there was significant difference between the sample mean and the hypothesized mean. Most of the participants were married and female who were 35 to 44 years old and 45 – 54 years old. They had teaching experience of 11 – 20 years. The majority of them were on the undergraduate level whose field of study was on Sciences. They had ranks which were predominantly Teacher I – III whose monthly salary ranged from Php 21,000 – 25,999. As far as money management, the teachers often practiced (M = 3.13) all in the indicators included in this investigation but rarely practiced savings and investments (M = 2.36) and insurance and retirement planning (M = 2.50). Hence, the overall mean for their financial practices was 2.67 verbally described as often practiced. There was no significant difference between the sample mean on insurance and investments and the hypothesized population parameter of 3.51 (t = -0.18; p > .05); however, the means of the samples with regard money management (t = 11.34; p < .05), and savings and investments (t = -2.74; p < .05) did differ significantly with the hypothesized population mean. In the light of the above findings, it can be concluded that the teachers of Bacuag District, in the Division of Surigao del Norte, to some extent, managed money properly. They enabled to track down their expenditures, and paid bills and loans on time. Their budget priority was on the immediacy of their needs. However, they have not prioritized savings, investments, purchase of insurance and retirement planning. This can be indicative of the insufficiency of knowledge towards long-range financial planning.