Theory and Practice of Management of Personal Finances in the Czech Republic

The topic of this thesis is personal and family finance. At the time of extensive government austerity measures, uncertainty of countries' future, or even international companies, and on the other side the ever bigger influence of advertisement and consumer culture, its importance grows with each year. The main goal of this thesis is to confirm or disprove the hypothesis that presumes the following: although people think they are handling their personal finance right, they often make typical wrong decisions. Part of the theory is a survey dealing with financial literacy of Czechs that support a theory that they have considerable gaps in managing their finances. Further on, the thesis engages in possibilities on how to eliminate these gaps. Doing this, the author perceives the family, or individual, as a parallel to a company, while their finances management makes parallel to the company's accounting. It also briefly deals with why these mistakes are present, using behavioral economics as a tool for explanation. The theoretical part presents possibilities and products that are to find at a usual economy subject on the market to those willing to evaluate their finances. The practical part is looking for answer to question what the most frequent mistakes are. The author then chooses the one he considers the most significant, namely the absence of planning. It then tries to prove, that elimination of this mistake leads to considerable improvements and optimization in managing finances.