Abstract

This paper examined financial literacy among a sample of individuals residing in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and its relation to different forms of personal debt. These forms of personal debt include bank loans, borrowing from friends and/or family members, and borrowing through credit cards. We used a questionnaire distributed to a convenient sample of 412 individuals working for service organizations and residing across the UAE. Usable responses were about 45% of the sample and were subjected to descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, and t-tests. The results indicate that the average level of financial literacy in UAE (0.433) is statistically significantly below the average level reported in the literature (about 0.50). However, there were no significant differences between the mean score of males and females. The results also indicate that individuals with strong financial attitude tend to borrow less from credit cards. UAE nationals are more likely to borrow from banks than using credit cards or borrowing from friends/or family members.

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