Teach kids how to care for cash

They can retire with £1million if we show them how

Financial education for the nation... and its children

It’s GCSE results week, where children are measured on their ability to pass exams – or perhaps, this year, on navigating themselves through the unfortunate events of lockdown.

It’s been a tough time for my kids Olly and Bella, who thrive on social interaction with friends, so it seems unfair to grade children at such a young age on subjects they may never need.

I’d like the curriculum to be updated. Our financial world is more complex than ever, yet we don’t teach kids how to handle it.

At the moment, we’re all able to buy shares in companies around the world at the click of a button – but at no point are children given a word of financial advice or education.

How financially aware are we?

According to the OECD/

INFE 2016 Survey of Adult Financial Literacy, adults in the UK are exactly in line with the average of 30 countries when benchmarked against an internationallyagreed set of questions.

This puts the UK 15th against the 29 other countries that took part, and just above Thailand and Albania. That’s below the average for OECD countries and well below France, Norway and Austria.

In 2019, a financial capability survey of young people and their parents was repeated. It found that, overall, the children of today have a reasonable grounding in knowledge and understanding about money. They recognise some financial products and

Children who never save are least likely to be confident in managing their money

concepts, and know that money has a value.

Compared to the 2016 survey, fewer parents were setting rules around debt. However, it also found 37 per cent of children aged seven to 17 saved monthly, and 63 per cent had a bank account of their own.

Kids who never save are the least likely to be confident in managing their money – only 28 per cent of those who never save are confident, versus 63 per cent of those who save regularly.

More than just money

Grandma Shute would say: “It’s not how much you earn, it’s what you do with it that’s important.”

Good financial habits are like manners and a balanced diet: you use and benefit from them, or ignore them.

It’s reasonable for a young adult venturing into the workplace to save and retire with a pension of over £1million… but if they are never shown how to do it, why expect it from them?

Around 9.5 million UK adults have suffered from mental health issues as a result of financial anxiety. Almost a third of those surveyed say they struggle to sleep at night because of it.

Managing your money is both a logical process of knowing what to do, and a habit you need to learn.

This is why I wrote The Money Plan and why I share my easy-to-follow tips here and at warrenshute.com

Control your money – don’t let money control you.