Finances and pensions need to be taught in high schools

[MutterlyClueless]

I am lucky in that I have a defined benefit work pension (I know they are a rarity these days, so think myself lucky). I pay contributions and my employer pays a higher amount.

All good, apart from the fact that I could have retired at my scheme pension age and received my pension, but instead continued to work a few more years to achieve a higher pension.

I thought because I had unpaid maternity leave and worked part-time in my career I needed to work longer to boost my reckonable years and pension amount.

But I now think that in some cases a bird in the hand is better than one in the bush.

Am I the only one that didn't understand the pension choices and carried on working full time when I didn't need to?

Pensions of all kinds should be on the curriculum in high schools and colleges along with other courses about finances to help people stay out of debt and plan for their future better.

Why are schools expected to teach everything? How about personal responsibility?

Finances are covered. But can you honestly imagine a 14yo taking in detail about the pros and cons of retiring at different dates. You had access to google, or to talk to a pensions adviser which would be much more effective than you having been taught about this 30 or 40 years ago.

I kind of agree, but it will have to be added to the list of eleventy billion things that people think should be taught in schools. There isn't time to include a fraction of them. There is so much information online now. Surely websites like Money Saving Expert have guides to pensions etc?

I don't agree with pensions being taught as such but definite financial skills, debt management, mortgages should be taught at least in some aspect. It is significantly more useful than most maths taught in school in a real world application. I know as a 32 year old this would have helped me, I made stupid financial decisions because I didn't understand the implications and now I'm looking at mortgages and it's all gobbledygook that I'm having to teach myself with Google because I have no one else to teach me. A head start of a basic understanding in school/college would have been really useful.

Would you really remember at 55+ something you taught 40+ years ago at school and probably found boring and irrelevant?

But people have a responsibility to educate themselves about their own pension options, especially when they’re getting to the point of thinking about claiming. Why on earth wouldn’t you check the rules of your pension when you were considering when to retire?

i do think financial education is important for kids but don’t think they need a thorough explanation of every type of pension. Just that they should save into their pension, their employer will contribute too, and they get tax relief on the contributions, so it’s one of the best ways to save for the future. And that the later they leave it to start, the harder it will be to get a decent pot to retire on

Money Saving Expert guide to everything you could want yo know about pensions.

And yes, teenagers willbe uninterested and also have forgotten everything they learned abouf it by the time it becomes relevant to them!

Helping people stay out of debt is not in the interests of an economy entirely based on debt.

Anyone is free to learn about this stuff, most won't, and our financial system depends on that.

They didn't just forget this is important for kids to know. It's not in society's interest for most people to be debt free, it would crash the economy if fewer people took debt.

I have taught stuff like this during PHSCE session, the kids honestly couldn't care less.

Presumably when you joined your defined benefit scheme (public sector?) you would have been given all sorts of information, did you read it?
If it is public sector there will also be a website with realms of information.
Sorry op think this one is on you.

Lloyds provided resources for my school, this is the same sort of thing.

www.lloydsbankacademy.co.uk/financial-skills/five-sixteen/life-work-money-how-do-i-stay-in-control

A huge number of people work jobs rather than careers- often insecure, often part time, low wage where there is little scope for any development or progression. The idea of financial choices like pensions and investments seem pie in the sky when you have little to no savings and live week to week or month to month.

It would be great to be able to plan a retirement, but I can barely plan my Christmas budget when I don't have the luxury of knowing how long my current job will last.

At the moment my retirement plan involves a bottle of vodka, a Leonard Cohen album and a rope.

If you have the luxury of big financial decisions to make, then you probably also have the luxury of time to read up on your options outside of school hours.

Jesus wept. As someone who is eligible to retire, are you seriously suggesting that some pensions lessons at school decades before would have made any material difference ?

What you should have done is avail yourselves of pensions illustration and or financial advice you would have been eligible for.

It amazes me that people think pshe lessons as a teenager are the solution Instead of carefully reading the pensions documents you are sent.

I'm looking at mortgages and it's all gobbledygook that I'm having to teach myself with Google because I have no one else to teach me.

That is very much adulthood as I gathered

People don't remember most of what they learned at school - not even from subjects they learned for years and years for several lessons per week. They certainly aren't going to remember the salient (but deathly dull) details about pensions they would learn in the one or two PSHE pensions lessons they might get squeezed in during their whole school career! So they'd end up having to look it all up from scratch anyway, if they had the motivation to fo do.

Unless you’ve got a classroom full of 15 year old Jacob Rees-Moggs you’ll be talking pensions and they’ll all be ignoring you.

I would pay to watch that horror movie! Or psychological thriller?

But yes, totally. I don't remember anything of that from school (though that would be for nothing anyway since it was a different country...)

Omg yes op.

Why should schools have to waste time teaching 60% if not more of pupils maths concepts they will never ever use or need.

Outside sourcing needs to be brought in to drill pupils on proper finance. Eg investments... taxes, wage's, employees rights.

Proper budgeting and saving!

Yes pension's!

It needs teaching in an interesting and relevant way.

Surely you had a pension statement every year? It's very straightforward.
I don't think you learning about pensions many years ago would have helped you if you didn't bother to read the information on your actual pension when you needed to tbh.
Plus by the time kids get to thinking about their own retirement a lot will have changed.

Yes and no.
yes - and they certainly were 50 years ago when I was in primary.
no - because I think it is partly the responsibility of the parents, employers and the individual.

Also advice and conditions change, so what was once the normal way to do things, isn’t necessarily the case 10/20/30 years later. Private pensions (and isa etc) were only the preserve of the very very rich when we were taught. So we were only ever taught about state pensions, credit and normal current accounts. These have changed dramatically as well in the last 10 years, so fully expect that what is taught today, isn’t what actually happens in the future.

I paid into my deferred pension scheme now for 20+ years. Since then the company closed it and only offers a different scheme for new joiners.

DH has another scheme for his pension as well.

I also know of several legislation changes since then. So anything you teach a 16 year old now won't be the same in 40 years when they need to know how to ringfence their retirement pot.

In my opinion it's parents who need to talk to their children about money and as an adult you have to learn to take responsibility and learn the language and have an interest in it. Financial management is a life skill which is ongoing for years, not a lesson in Y11.

No. Teach mathematics and critical thinking. Financial products change completely every decade, and what was a sound long-term investment ten years ago is not necessarily that now.
And there's a reason why giving investment advice is a regulated profession. Not sure teachers need that responsibility as well.

I think it should be easier to get financial advice as an adult. It all seems to be linked to a company wanting to make sales or cost a lot.

I guess like a CAB drop in.

There's already a massive thread about this!

@chuggabo

You are are almost a classic example of why it needs to be taught/compulsory savings.

Even from a young teens putting £5 away a month would have massively compounded by now!
A good illustration of investing information v no idea about investments showed up on a thread a few months ago.

Someone remembered their DC was given 200 years ago by the labour government to invest for the DC .
Those that put it into a normal bank account had pretty much only 200 after 18 years or just less.
Those that had put it into a stocks and shares fund and forget about it... they had between I think £500 and more to show for it.

Those who had managed to contribute even small amounts to stock and share had really managed to grow it into something v useful for their children.

The lack of education around this is so shocking!

I was in a room of educated people,life experiences etc recently and in conversation investing came up and I was astonished when investing was immediately slammed down as hocus Pocus.... something you need to watch constantly or something that illerate market boy stocks market people do every day!!

And yet it's highly likely their pensions are invested into this hocus pocus couldron they speak of.

I was gobsmacked.

Too divisive teaching kids finance. A typical class will contain rich and poor and you are going to possibly shame the poor kids while giving the rich kids info they don't really need.

Maths lessons contain all the operations you need to monitor household finance. Questions about debt and investment are societal and economic and valuable at the appropriate time.