Financial education the key to reducing childhood money worries, says Debt Advice Foundation
Young people who worry about their family’s finances should be given the chance to learn how to help balance the books through financial education, according to national charity Debt Advice Foundation.
The Halifax’s annual survey of children’s attitudes to money, the Pocket Money Survey, has suggested that more than half of eight to fifteen-year-olds worry about money, with almost ninety per cent of them saying their parents do so.
Young people who worry about their family’s finances should be given the chance to learn how to help balance the books through financial education, according to national charity Debt Advice Foundation.
The Halifax’s annual survey of children’s attitudes to money, the Pocket Money Survey, has suggested that more than half of eight to fifteen-year-olds worry about money, with almost ninety per cent of them saying their parents do so.
More than twenty per cent of the young people who took part said that they think their parents worry about money ‘all the time’ and just three per cent said their parents ‘never’ worried about money.
Debt Advice Foundation MD David Rodger commented: “Children are seeing their parents with cash concerns, but the vast majority are not taught how families get into financial difficulty or, more importantly, how they can help with the family budgets.
“Most parents try to shield their children from money problems, and few schools have robust financial education programmes. Meanwhile children are encouraged at every turn to be consumers.
“The result is that they don’t understand how a family budget works, what demands on their parents’ income they are making or how they can help reduce the whole family’s bills.”
For more on the survey, go to: http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/media1/press_releases/2012_press_release_brands/halifax/1108_kids.asp
For information on Debt Advice Foundation’s money education programme, go to: https://www.debtadvicefoundation.org/education
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