The BVI Financial Services Commission (FSC) has launched a new website to provide guidance to people about money matters and help them make sound personal financial decisions.

Called Money Matters BVI, the website www.MoneyMattersBVI.org, offers free, independent, unbiased financial information to assist people as they go through the various stages of their lives.    The website has the subtitle, “Make your money work for you.”

Managing Director of the FSC, Mr. Robert Mathavious, says “the website is comprehensive and provides information and advice on managing one’s financial affairs from the cradle to the grave.”  

Indeed, the website covers a wide range of topics from Getting a Baby to Planning a Funeral.    Categories include Managing Your Money, Life Happens, Protecting Your Money and Business.   How to budget, save, invest, start a business, manage debt, plan for retirement and avoid fraud are among the many topics covered.  The website also has useful tools, calculators and publications that can be downloaded. 

Money Matters BVI has a mascot Ace, the ant, who symbolizes the importance of saving and being responsible with resources.  Ace also has a friend Gretta, the grasshopper, who  will also appear regularly in the Money Matters materials.  BVI folklore has it that when you see a green grasshopper, money is coming. 

Mr. Mathavious says that the Money Matters BVI website is part of the FSC’s financial literacy programme, which aims, among other things, to create a financially literate BVI public by educating them on the basics of finance and how to manage their money as well as their general estate.   The programme, he adds, partly fulfills FSC statutory mandate to educate the general public about matters relating to financial services business in the BVI.

“Financial literacy is an essential life skill.   We want to ensure that people make sound decisions about their financial future and that’s why we are providing information that is clear, accessible, in plain language, and available to them whenever they want it,” he says.

To find out how you can make your money work for you, visit the Money Matters BVI website today or contact the Financial Literacy Coordinator at 852 4715.