Financial Knowledge in Undergraduate Students: Impacts on Financial Behavior and Implications for Higher Education

The financial knowledge of young Brazilians is below the global reality. However, it is not known how this knowledge affects the behavior of these young people, especially in early adulthood.. So, this paper aims to identify the financial knowledge's influence on these students' financial behavior. This research adopts a quantitative methodology, approaching undergraduate students from three educational groups in Brazil. The results reinforce the low performance of these students in financial knowledge and confirm that greater knowledge in personal finance can indeed influence the behavior of these young people in higher education. These findings highlight the importance of revisiting and updating Financial Education policies in Brazil. We believe that it is also crucial for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to adopt the theme of Financial Education as "Transversal Themes" (TT) in their curricular units. Thus, this research has theoretical and practical contributions. First, it contributes theoretically by bringing insights from the Brazilian context to the global debate on financial education. Secondly, it has a practical contribution by emphasizing the impact of financial knowledge on decision -making and indicating the fragility of the topic in undergraduate courses, demanding more assertive public policies.