To think children should be taught financial literacy?

[HeidiHaughton]

All the threads from women in such precarious financial situations. Never seemed to occur to them the cost of not working. And the invariable refrain that it "didn't make sense to go back after maternity leave". Surely as a social good people should be educated about how finances work.

Education is great, but it's only one piece of the puzzle alongside the environment, incentives, and expectations of a person.

Yes, people should start paying into a pension asap for compound interest, which is part of why there was a push for automatic enrolment because it was easy to see that it's difficult to do when there is conflicts with housing and food and many other things particularly if you look around your family tree and community and see a lot of people who didn't live long enough in good enough health to get a pension.

Yes, there are risks when not working with young children or ever, but I'm not sure a few lessons in secondary is going to solve issues around childcare cost & availability, a work culture that often doesn't work with caring responsibilities, and general messages around us about what is best for young children.

Many schools have been doing financial skills since well before Martin Lewis who did a lot to bring it more into the spotlight. Thing is, much like other classes, things we're taught at 14 can be a bit hazy and not really something we connect with at 24, even less when we're older, before getting into how much can change with new financial products and ways of using money. That's before getting to the great economic puzzle that even when well educated, people often don't make the most logical financial choices. There are other things infuencing choice than what would be the best answer on a test.

It's kinda like the argument about teaching healthy eating and the importance of exercise in schools. Yeah, it can play a role - but if education was all it took, we wouldn't see medical professionals with the same lack of healthy habits as much of the rest of the population. Knowing better doesn't automatically make doing better. Personally I think we need more of a culture of adult learning rather than pushing everything into schools and accepting that yeah, sometimes people do take risks, even when knowing better, and discussing what socially we think should happen when those risks come back to bite people. It's a difficult balancing act on an individual and population level.

It's very interesting that in my circle of friends, we have been talking about the importance of basic financial literacy and common sense that not everyone seems to be aware of. I found that some videos on YT can be useful and there's this financial channel called Sugarmamma Tv (nothing dodgy there) that talks about personal finance in easy, bite-sized way so it's not too scary. Her latest video is actually on how to teach kids about money, which can be very useful.

This is her channel
www.youtube.com/c/SugarMamma/featured

Parental responsibility

I think it's definitely on the parents. Daughters need to be taught to seek high paying careers (none of this waffle about 18-20k pittance salaries with for job that goes nowhere) and buy/rent a home. Yes it's hard, but men do it and no one's surprised. Childcare costs are astronomical, so you share them and men take a cut to their careers too.

Thankfully this is normality for some women, but it shouldn't be a minority.

@Flipflops85

To be honest. A lot of the families I know who are struggling, struggle due to soaring unemployment, and a punitive system that leaves them with, by far, unreasonably low sums of money, to bring up a family.

How do you teach people to manage 0?

Not only that, childcare costs are a huge issue, particularly for women. Are you suggesting the right to a family should be reserved for those on large incomes? That those on minimum wage somehow don’t deserve kids?

There are soaring vacancies and a desperate need of workers. If there's still people looking for work, they need to look at those areas.

Parents need to start teaching their children about real life things.

That's all well and good - but the reality of it is somewhat different. In an ideal world yes, parents should teach it, but we don't live in an ideal world and it would be far better for kids to learn a few practical life skills at school than some of the stuff they do learn.

I teach PSHE from years 7-12. We do everything from pocket money in the lower years to signing contracts, how tax works, the impact of a missed mobile phone bill on credit scores, the difference between a credit and debit card, payday loans, the basic principles of a mortgage. BUT, we are also being asked to do healthy eating, emotional wellbeing, consent, social media and online issues, family breakdown, bereavement, study skills, how government and voting works.... On one 50 min period a fortnight. And my school teaches til 4 15. At some point adults need to take responsibility to find out things for themselves.. The info is all out there. I'm asking my mortgage broker right now exactly how to manage my remortgage between lenders so I don't miss a payment or pay twice.. He's the expert, I send an email and get an answer. Schools can't do everything and even at 18 lots of youngsters won't pay much attention as it seems irrelevant.

It's on the curriculum already as part of personal development and wellbeing at my dds school. They cover the very basics through to quite detailed financial planning from year 7 -11. It's quite new though, at her school.

A resounding yes! I had No Clue about money when i left home and its wrecked my life. I dont mean understanding that job = money, i had a job from 13, but knowing how to be savvy with it, having the financial implications of marriage spelt out to me, the importance of pension, rent vs buy in housing - that would have been great!

They are. Certainly here in Wales anyway. My daughters both have GCSEs in financial education which they do once they sit their maths early.

I think it should be incorporated into other lessons. English Literature, Maths, Home Economics Etc. It should be quite easy to have a couple of lessons on the effects of debt Vs. Good money management, double-entry bookkeeping for budgeting and how to save for bills Etc.
For those children whose families don’t do this it might be enough to at least get them thinking about it...