LAUREN DAVIDSON PERSONAL ACCOUNT

Financial ignorance can be a matter of life and death, so we need to get to grips with it – now

It is customary at this time of year to resolve to live better. The Government has gone a step further. This week it laid out a 10-year plan to improve the nation’s financial well-being, from childhood to retirement.

The Money & Pensions Service outlined five goals to achieve by 2030. It wants two million more children to leave school with a meaningful financial education; two million more workers who haven’t got a rainy-day fund to start saving; two million fewer people to use credit to buy essentials such as food; two million more people to get advice on managing their debt; and five million more to understand how to plan their finances for retirement.

These are admirable and much-needed goals. This country is in the grip of a crisis in which more than five million children leave school not understanding financial basics. There are 11.5 million people who have less than £100 in savings and could not weather even the tiniest of shocks. Nine million adults rely on credit to buy food or pay bills and only 32pc of people who need it have access to debt advice.

There are 22 million people who don’t know enough about money to fund their retirement years. That means almost half of all adults in Britain, and two thirds of those who have yet to retire, are ill-prepared for their decades of life as a pensioner.

If something is not done – and soon – these numbers will only go up as those uneducated and unengaged children turn into working adults who don’t save, bill payers who spend on credit, borrowers who don’t

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Improving financial literacy is crucial. The biggest driver of bad money decisions is a simple lack of knowledge, the fear that you will be exposed as an idiot. Ignorance begets ignorance; if you don’t know who to ask, or even what to ask, you have no access to the answer. Education is empowerment.

This can be lifeand-death stuff. It’s a slippery slope for those who already struggle with money or fall into hard times. They are likely to become less financially resilient as they are forced to rely on more debt and other

In Britain there are 11.5 million people who have less than £100 in savings

last-ditch attempts to keep their head above water.

Just last week we reported the heartbreaking case of Danny Butcher, an Army veteran who took his own life after amassing thousands of pounds of debt. Sadly, his story is not an anomaly. Every single year, more than 100,000 people with debt problems attempt suicide in England.

The Money & Pension Service’s goals are a good first step. It’s worth noting, though, that even if all five targets were met, there would still be millions of people uneducated, without savings, in debt and unprepared for retirement – many more than the number of people the scheme hopes to help.

But it’s a start.