The dramatic rise in levels of consumer borrowing, the ease in accessing globalfinancial services via the internet, and the complexity of modern pension options haveall heightened the need for enhancing public competence in handling their everydayfinancial matters as well as longer term investment decisions. Financially literate citizensbecome empowered and transformed by their skills in managing money.The FINALIST projects sets out to become a European-wide consortium of educationaland community organizations coming together to implement initiatives which, in thecontext of lifelong learning, would stimulate and improve adult financial literacy amongstselected vulnerable sub-groups. The project will develop, pilot and disseminate trainingmaterials for use in outreach workshops on economic/financial literacy. The project willalso build a practitioner network of financial literacy educators, who will be fully trainedin optimum delivery of the new material.The project will draw on the results of financial literacy training needs of selectedconsumers groups, on surveys to be undertaken by academic institutions in five EUparticipating countries, as well as on the expertise and knowledge of best practiceoffered by partner community and consumer bodies. The project’s philosophy and itsmethodology are based on the principle that simple provision of written information isthe least effective method of raising financial literacy levels. Interactive training materialand workshop style sessions (combined with use of eLearning-based self-taughtmodules) are recommended, covering topics such as budgeting, recognizing scams,calculating the cost and value of credit, saving, and managing debt. Some introductionto the socio-economic forces which shape the economic world will also be included inthe training material to be produced.