Jakarta. If you are caught in the middle of obligations to take care of living parents and raising your own children at the same time, it’s safe to say that you belong to the so-called ‘sandwich generation’.

It may not sound as fancy as Generation Z and X, or the Millennials, or those Boomers of the 1850s-60s. It indeed is a trouble that adds burdens to other demographic cohorts because the sandwich generation can be found among those millennials and Generation X as well.

According to the Central Statistics Agency, or BPS, every 100 people of productive age in the country have to support 17 elderly people. 

In order to cut off this cycle, the younger generation has to come up with a clear plan for their future and make sure they will be financially independent after retirement.

But how?

CEO and founder of consulting company Personal Growth, Ratih Ibrahim, said financial literacy must become an important part of education from the early stage of human lives.

According to an estimate, only 38 percent of Indonesian adults have the skills of financial management, budgeting, or investing. The level of financial literacy is even lower among teenagers, at around 16 percent.

Parents can introduce financial skills to children by allowing them to manage their pocket money and teaching them the benefits of saving.

“Introducing money to children means that we teach them to appreciate its value and to calculate. When saving money, children learn about numbers and set aside resources for future use while managing their priority list,” she said.

Parents can use mobile applications to learn about financial skills and there is now a special app designed to help them introduce this particular topic to their children.

Whiz is an app designed to introduce financial skills to children as young as eight, according to Dominic Sumarli, co-founder and CEO of Whiz.

The app offers a real-world and fun experience in financial learning for children and does a great help for parents in introducing this important topic to their kids, he said.

It’s the first family-based financial app in Indonesia that allows parents to manage and monitor a child’s allowance using a digital payment platform and is applicable to all merchants with the QRIS payment system. 

For young users, the app is a good way to encourage their saving habits while they can also make transactions the way their parents do, of course with a spending limit.

Dominic claimed that Whiz has received support from major global investors like Sequoia and Y Combinator. The app is officially listed in the Communication and IT Ministry and authorized by Bank Indonesia to conduct electronic transactions.

“Based on our experience at many retail banks and fintech platforms, innovations in financial service companies focus merely on adults while ignoring children and teenagers,” Dominic said.

Whiz, which trains children to “earn money from their efforts based on assigned responsibilities”, basically functions as a piggy bank, digital payment tool, and accounting book, he added.