January 5 2018
This week marks Global Money Week, with schools and other institutions across the globe doing their part for financial education, including in the UK. This is particularly important as recent research has found that a significant percentage of English and Northern Irish adults are lacking financial skills.
Financial skills deficit
The scientific study, which looked at financial knowledge and skills across the world, found that a third of adults in England could not work out how much change they should receive (source: A. Bhutoria, J. Jerrim, A. Vignoles, 2018. The financial skills of adults across the world: New estimates from PIAAC). In other measures of financial knowledge, such as calculating the cost of goods according to a certain unit, English and Northern Irish adults also ended up scoring below average.
This is worrying news, and could explain why a separate study from financial education charity MyBnk sees 54% of parents call for schools to spend more time teaching kids about personal finance. Fifty-six percent would even choose to cut time from the national curriculum to teach children about budgeting and how to avoid debt.
Money tips
With the Financial Conduct Authority warning that young people are building up an alarming amount of debt, this is certainly a group that could use a better understanding of finance. To help young people get to grips with their own money management a bit better, money manager Plum has compiled a list of tips: